Ahh, remote fieldwork! Though we are not a field-focused group, we have participated in several campaigns over the years (mostly to the Canadian Arctic). I can't recall a single one of them having gone off without a hitch - there is always at least one major challenge. This week, Izzy describes her experience this past summer visiting the Scotty Creek Research Station, near Fort Simpson in the NWT.
You can find some of her photos above. Caption: "Top left: a bison by the side of the road, bottom left: float plane flown by the lovely Sergei, right: ferry ride across the Liard during extremely high river levels!"
By Isabelle Marincic
Throwing it back to June 2026, my supervisor and I went to Scotty Creek Research Station (SCRS) in the Northwest Territories to conduct some field work! I love the outdoors and getting to do my job while being surrounded by nature, so if conducting field work during my masters is a possibility you bet I’m gonna do what it takes to make it happen. Aka beg John to figure out somewhere for me to go and something for me to do. Field work can be extremely expensive and time consuming, and sometimes you don’t even leave with the best results (foreshadowing). But for me, getting to do the physical work connects me with the science even more, with the bonus of getting to breathe in fresh wetland air while I do it.
Why might a planetary scientist who primarily studies Mars need to go to a wetland you may ask? Wetlands are actually a major source and sink of global methane. To test an instrument we have in the lab and are continuing to develop, we took it to SCRS to measure methane fluxes within a wetland that consists of different terrain types and likely multiple methane sources. The hope is to develop a methane spectrometer that can go to Mars and measure methane there (for more work on this see Summer Trip to MARS), as current methane measurements are seriously infrequent. A lack of methane measurements on the planet Mars inhibits people like me from learning more about sources and sinks of that molecule on the planet.
So off we went, despite multiple hiccups including flight delays and a rental car check engine light, we made it to SCRS. The 7 hour trek to Fort Simpson required 3 modes of transportation. This included sight seeing by car, a gnarly ferry ride, and finally a float plane flight from Fort Simpson over to SCRS (all pictured above).
Once settled into camp, the real work began. On a Thursday in June, John and I took methane measurements at an area spanning two bogs with a hummock separating them. We selected this location with the hopes of potentially seeing some concentration changes due to bogs being wet and hummocks being dry, therefore they may emit methane at different rates. After taking the time to carefully map out the grid area we took measurements for around 5 hours. Upon returning to camp to check the data retrieved after a long day in the field, I found nothing had actually recorded. Turns out, the USB I was using accidentally gave the spectrometer's internal computer a virus that prevented the full start up sequence from being carried out. Instead, that programming only partially executed, which made it sound like it was on and running without taking any data.
After briefly crashing out and contemplating if I should quit and give up on being a grad student, John helped me lock in and realize that these things happen. Especially in the field. To quote John Steinbeck (different John) from his book “The Log from the Sea of Cortez” (1951):
“For many little errors like this, we have concluded that all collecting trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.”
Thankfully due to a supportive supervisor (and camp members I had just met), I ended up fixing the error in the code by politely harassing an employee from the company who manufactures the spectrometer. To Bob from ABB, I owe you my life.
So after all was said and done, I got about a third of the data I initially wanted out of this trip. But almost most importantly, what I got out of this trip is a better understanding of how to approach field work and what to do if something goes wrong. It was a really tough lesson to learn but I think I am better for it. Nothing worth doing is easy.
Finally, I would like to thank the Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation community who lead and support ongoing research at SCRS. The community was extremely welcoming to us as new researchers to the site, and I sincerely hope to be back soon!
