Field work in pictures
Lars Iversen
The field season of 2017 is long over, most of the memories from this summer is now stored in data tables or as graphs in manuscript drafts. Reflecting on the fieldwork conducted is a great escape from a rainy December evening and a reminder of the commitments aviating next year! Justifying collecting and preserving thousands of aquatic insects is their contribution to the higher research questions originally motivating (and funding) the field work. A field campaign is first complete once the paper is written and accessible to the broader community.
A major aim of the year was to create a baseline dataset from a cluster of ponds created by World War II bomb creators at a coastal meadow near Copenhagen. This included seasonal temperature logs, daily oxygen/temperature stratification across the season, sampling of aquatic insect communities and other classic environmental descriptor measurements. Furthermore, a project on sexual conflicts in diving beetles was continued for the second year in a row. During an intense two weeks field campaign more than 50 lakes were visited along a gradient from central Sweden to north of the polar circle.
