Up close and personal with plants...

Well today proved to be a long day of fieldwork out in the tundra and in the boreal forest - tundra zones. We spent hours crawling on our stomachs in search of 50 white spruce seedlings and 50 white spruce saplings in each ecosystem. The job sounds easy, but basically it is like searching for a 1/2 tall Waldo in a giant 30 square foot Where's Waldo book. Your body becomes exhausted from kneeling on your knees looking for such small plants. The seedlings we harvested were very small. Most were under a 1/2 inch in height. The saplings ranged from 8 inches to 6 feet tall.