The University of Alaska EPSCoR program, NASA IPY and NSF IPY, Thermal State of Permafrost programs are conducting an outreach effort in conjunction with it's research focus on permafrost and infrastructure. The outreach effort has been termed the "Permafrost Health" program and consists of installing permafrost temperature monitoring systems!
Tohru and Kenji visit Manley Hot Spring on 21st of September.
Basically, we were trying to drill a deeper hole next to the existing
hole at this time. When we drilled the first hole in the Spring of 2007, we could only go 3.5m deep.
We thought it was because the permafrost (and the air temperature
that day) was very low and ice was re-forming on the bit.
So, we wanted to give it another try to get down to 6m.
That is the standard depth for the outreach program.
Anyway, the drilling did not go well.
The reason why we couldn't go deeper was because there was a layer of
gravel.
With the equipment we had it was a bit too much to tackle at the time.
So there's no change in the system or the monitoring station.