Marre Sale

Created: 2014-01-28 15:44:15
Modified: 2014-01-28 15:56:18

SITE DESCRIPTION

This site is located on the coast of the Kara Sea near the polar station Marre-Sale. Measurement of thaw depth at Marre-Sale has been conducted since 1978, and at

the associated CALM 1km grid site since 1995.  The 1000 × 1000 m CALM site occupies fluvial-marine terraces with altitudes ranging from 10 to 25 m. Sandy-silty deposits prevail in the upper portion of the lithological section. A few patches of peat, 0.1 to 0.7 m thick, occur atop the section. Well-drained polygonal tundra, comprised of grasses, moss, lichens, and prostrate dwarf shrubs, is interspersed with blowout sands and poorly drained sedge-hemiprostrate dwarf shrub lichen-moss tundra at the CALM site. Sedge-moss mires with peatland fragments are characteristic of ravines and drained lake depressions. Owing to severe climatic conditions on the coast of the Kara Sea, the height of dwarf shrubs does not exceed 15 cm (Melnikov et al, 2004).

SAMPLING DESIGN AND METHOD:

1-sq km grid consists of a square array of surveyed permanent stakes separated by 100 m, yielding an 11 × 11 array of sampling nodes on each grid. Thaw depth and snow sampling was conducted twice by manual probing at each stake. The two values for each sampling point are averaged, yielding a maximum of 121 data points per grid per probing date. The active layer was not measured at locations where grid points intersect rocks or deep water.