Section 3. Igarka - The tundra-forest ecotone.

Days 5 and 6: (August 16&17) Excursion in forest-tundra, study of permafrost landscape features. Visit Permafrost Museum. Discussion of vegetation and taiga ecosystem. Helicopter excursion to peat plateau.

Igarka, Saturday 17 August 7:30 a.m.

Jeri is ruffling around among our scattered possessions trying to create order, if not in the sense of what item goes in what bag, than at least in her perception of what is where. She is also still looking for items we are certain to have packed, but which have so far not been located in any of our bags or packs. I am less confrontational with the minor demons that manage Murphy’s law, and have accepted a compromise with fate. The cards have been dealt, and I am resigned to the fact that my fork is lost, and that my socks do not dry overnight. We are in a room in a sports complex, which is set up as a hybrid between an office, a lounge and a bedroom. Jeri sleeps on the couch; I prefer a foamy on the floor. All our bags sit on top of the two desks. A string, running from a window handle to a hook on a freestanding closet is our laundry line. We have two sinks, side by side, both with cold water only. Across the hall are elementary showers and an unmentionable toilet without a seat. We eat with everyone else in a school cafeteria of sorts, a ten-minute walk from here, and try to focus our expectations on the fascinating environment where we go hiking. We have navigated some rough spots, but are doing well, after all we are here, have seen some 1800 km of the Yenisei valley from the ship, and had our first hike in the forest tundra yesterday.

That excursion was most interesting in relation to the effects of permafrost on the environment, and broadened my understanding of the periglacial environment considerably. The same rattletrap bus, which met us at the dock on arrival came to collect us, and drove us westwards out of town on a dirt road. This road got narrower and narrower, and eventually petered-out a couple of kilometers beyond the last abandoned industrial site. The hiking trail led from there, through delightful, gentle woodland of secondary growth birches to an area of small lakes and peat palsas. Boris explained that the birch forest was the site of a Stalin-period women’s gulag, which had supplied labor for one of the local cold war industries. Early in the Khrushchev era, any survivors were allowed to go home, and the wooden buildings were burned. Typically, seed from nearby birches germinated in the scarred soil and ashes, and the woodland we walked through grew up. I could not help thinking that each tree represented the soul of one of the women who had died a lonely, miserable and unnecessary death, far from home. Since no records were kept of who died where, Russians will have to live with merely a long list of millions of people who just disappeared forever.

Beyond the birch forest, we found a fascinating area where eight-meter high peat palsas were thrust up between small, shallow ponds. This kind of landscape is common in the northern edge of the taiga; I have studied very similar phenomena in the Churchill area in northern Manitoba. The phenomenon is only partly understood, in that it is slow, and highly affected by changes in the local climate. In essence, it involves peat buildup, which acts as an insulator during dry, warm summer weather, allowing for the persistence of permafrost near the surface, which is present only at much greater depth under the ponds. This leads to water being drawn sideways from the ponds into the peat, causing large amounts of ice to be formed, resulting in the up-thrust of the peat, forming what are called ‘palsas’. We had our picnic lunch on top of one of the palsas, and after explaining the situation to the students, I illustrated the phenomenon dramatically by digging between two blueberry bushes into the peat surface, and coming up with a chunk of ice from less than a foot below the surface. However, we also noticed that the palsa we were on, was ‘decaying’, i.e. the south and west facing sides were warming up and melting, causing them to collapse. Willem Vreeken talked about long term effects of such permafrost initiated phenomena on soil formation and explained why in the collapsing sides we found layers of clay inside the peat. I will not go into the complex models necessary to fully understand what we think happens over long periods of time, especially, since they are just that, models. Only much more carefully executed research will be able to produce a reliable explanation. Such research may well be done in the near future, since we are just starting to realize that a slight switch in arctic peat dynamics can have far reaching effects on our climate. In the recent past, we seem to have had a close balance between peat build up, and peat decay. As little as a five-percent change could result in arctic peat-lands becoming either a major carbon dioxide source or a sink. It could have a much greater effect on the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas balance than does all our industrial output!

On the Yenisei, Sunday 18 August 9:30 a.m.

We have said good-by to poor Igarka, a desperate town, crumbling into decay, due to the aftermath of soviet policies of mismanagement, followed by a harsh, new life of Victorian style dog-eat-dog competitive private enterprise. Most of the industries of this town proved to be not competitive in the new economy, and shut down. As a result, many people have left, leaving a town of empty crumbling apartment blocks and a failing infrastructure behind. We were surprised that all the people we met seemed to be cheerful, friendly and apparently content. Most were well dressed and healthy looking.

The only sign of personal malaise among the Igarkans was the prevalence of drunken men, who cheerfully staggered home from some all night binge, at the time that we were on our way to breakfast. Our second day at this depressed town was for us a very interesting and exciting one. We spent the morning in the permafrost museum, and for the afternoon, we were taken by helicopter to a spectacularly large tundra-like peat plateau. Unfortunately, the good weather abandoned us, so that we spent the entire afternoon working in a gentle, but cold rain, which by the end of the day left us all soaked and chilled to the bone. By this morning, the rain is still very much with us; the same dark gray sky is still unloading excess water, and it looks like an all day affair. I think we are lucky that this is a day on the ship. Let us hope that it will clear up before we have to put up our tents tonight.

The above ground part of the museum is a small, fairly old-fashioned affair, with artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, etc, but the below-grade part is excellent and unforgettable. As we descended down the stairs, it got colder by the step, and soon the walls and ceilings were covered with condensed ice crystals. In the main underground chamber, the staff washes the condensed ice off the walls, so as to reveal the structure of the substratum. I was amazed to discover that the walls consisted of layers of frozen clay, separated by layers of clear ice which make up at least fifty percent of the total. Apparently, given enough time, frozen soil attracts water, which freezes into pure ice lenses, just like what happens in palsas. No wonder that in this region buildings collapse when the permafrost thaws under them; they are essentially standing on more water than land. At the bottom of one of the tunnels, under all that clay and ice that has been frozen for tens of thousands of years, were roots and stumps and branches, which must have come down as driftwood on the Yenisei during some interglacial period, when there was open water. Later it was buried under tons of marine clay deposits, and frozen in location, only to be exposed a few decades ago by the Russian permafrost project.

After lunch, our rattletrap bus came, we all piled in, and off we went to the Igarka heli-pad, where a disturbingly rusty and worn-looking helicopter with a crew of three was waiting for us. I was in the first group of sixteen people, and I had a relatively clean window and a functional seatbelt. Once we were all in, and the pilots were in the cockpit, the third crewmember climbed in, unhooked the ladder, slammed the door shut and off we roared. I loved the views of the town and the river, and then taiga all the way to the horizon, interrupted only by occasional fens, bogs and patches of tundra vegetation. After a while we came upon the peat plateau, which was an endless flat area of polygons, covered in moss, lichen and low shrubs, separated from one another by narrow channels with sphagnum and sedge vegetation. Far in the distance, the saw-tooth skyline of taiga indicated that the plateau was not really endless. As we hopped out into the soft, spongy moss mat, and the helicopter took off to get the second group, the desolate vastness of the landscape, deepened by the dark cloud and incessant rain weighed briefly upon my mood, but then I saw the beauty of both the grand scale of the wide open space, and the detail of the various species of lichens. With Serge and a retinue of keen students we examined and discussed the polygons, their structure and history. In essence they were probably palsas, but for some reason they were stable at a relatively small size. Imagine them in cross section, about one meter above the level of the channels that surround them. Under the insulating layer of the moss and lichen, the permafrost would be close to the surface, while under the channels, the frost would be much deeper. Only a detailed study of the hydrology of the entire system could reveal why the system is so regular and stable. I have studied similar structures in the Churchill area with Rick Bello from York University. There we showed that such low palsas drain excess rainwater into the surrounding channels, which in turn slowly drain into streams and hence, away from the peat area.

After a good look and a lengthy discussion, we hiked to the edge of the plateau, where it ends in a deep swamp, beyond which is an area of well-formed birch/larch northern taiga. Unfortunately, even those of us who wore hip-waders could not cross this swamp, so that we did not have a chance to see the woodland close up. But what drew my attention, was the dynamics of the palsas adjacent to the swamp. These palsas were falling apart, and were disappearing into the water. One had broken right down the middle, and the permafrost had melted. With my knife, I cut a clean profile through the peat, down some 60 cm. I found to my surprise, layers of sphagnum peat separated by layers of sedge and branch peat, with remnants of birch bark, indicating sizable trees. There was only one explanation: over periods of time, taiga and peat plateau had oscillated in some dynamic process, one following the other. We obviously had neither the resources nor the time to delve into this mystery; was it due to climatic oscillations, or could it be a self-driven cycle, or….? Neither Serge, nor Boris had a satisfactory answer either. The dynamics of permafrost, hydrology, local climate and vegetation is most complex, and can only be understood with a determined and multi-facetted research approach.

Towards the end of the afternoon, while waiting for the helicopter to come and pick us up, most of the group focused their attention on the great abundance of blueberries. Aware that I would probably never be back there, I tried to immerse myself in the atmosphere of the rain-drenched peat land, which was slowly blending into the darkening evening sky. I only saw one sign of life in all that grayness, a harrier, taking advantage of the last light of the day, elegantly and patiently hunted for some careless rodent. The extensive peat lands of northwestern Europe must have been very much like this. Some of my ancestors lived on or among such landscapes. They had no helicopter to pick them up, and bring them to a dry building with a bed and a down sleeping bag.