By Mika Kirkhus
In September 2025 Jeanne, Sonya, Léo, Vendy, Kristine, Elias, Inge, and Mika of the Between the Fjords research group carried out one of its final field campaigns for the DURIN project. DURIN aims to understand how dwarf shrubs in boreal, alpine, and arctic ecosystems respond to a changing climate. To study this, we collected data on the shrubs and the surrounding ecosystem, capturing both how the environment affects the plants and how the plants influence it in return. This includes measurements of carbon fluxes, plant litter degradation, soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), belowground fungal diversity, and soil nutrients, all of which help us piece together the bigger picture of how these ecosystems function under climate change.
DURIN is based at four main field sites in Norway. In the south, we work at Lygra, a coastal site, and Sogndal, an inland site. Further north, our research takes us to Senja on the coast and Kautokeino further inland. These sites were carefully chosen to compare dwarf shrubs and their cological roles across different climates, from north to south, coast to inland, and even diagonally, linking northern inland with southern coastal areas, and vice versa.
Our September fieldwork campaign began at Lygra. As a coastal site just an hour away from Bergen, rain was almost guaranteed — and it didn’t disappoint. Still, we managed to finish our work on schedule before heading to our next site, Sogndal. Of course, not without first making a stop at the UiB to safely store our loads of precious soil samples in the freezers. In Sogndal, the sun was shining (most of the time), and apart from some very angry ants determined to defend their neighborhood from our digging, everything went smoothly. We even had extra help from Kristine’s master’s student, Elias, which meant we finished on time to catch our flight to the next field location: Senja.
In Senja, we were joined by Inge, who brought her expertise in carbon fluxes and respiration measurements. She shared her knowledge with the team and ensured we collected high-quality data for DURIN’s carbon cycling focus. Alongside these measurements, we collected more soil samples and took care to keep them cool until they could be stored at UiB. This was especially critical for root and soil samples collected for fungal DNA analyses, as unwanted later fungal growth could quickly compromise their quality. At each site, we also retrieved litterbags, about 600 in total, that had been buried in the soil a year earlier. These bags, filled with plant litter collected from all four sites, allow us to measure mass loss and compare decomposition rates across climates. Like the soil samples, they too had to be kept cold to prevent continued decomposition after removal, ensuring that what we measure truly reflects conditions in the field.
Once we finished sampling in Senja, we set off for our final destination: Kautokeino. The six-hour drive took us through Finland, where we even encountered some reindeer along the way. In Kautokeino, the soils were shallow and sandy, which made sand–silt–clay measurements a bit tricky as the sand tended to fall out of the cores. On the bright side, the shallow soil made retrieving litter bags much easier, since we didn’t have to dig deeply to find them. In the end, we completed all our northern fieldwork in record time and returned with enough samples to fill our freezers to the brim. Our team is now content with a job well done and are ready for the next phase: analyzing soil properties, sorting biomass, extracting the fungal diversity in soil and root samples, weighing litter, and essentially piecing together how dwarf shrubs respond to a changing climate.
So, two weeks of fieldwork complete, freezers full, and now we’ll be enjoying the rainy fall season from the comfort of our lab!
This fieldwork was supported by UiB’s Climate and Energy Transition initiative (2025), and we are grateful for their support.
