Written by Paul Karpinski, Northland College

Photos by Adam Spencer

After tracking huemules, seeing glaciers and learning a plethora of new plants and birds in the alpine glacier valleys surrounding Lago O’Higgins, we had the privilege of visiting Tortel, home of Chile’s best bread! Tortel is a pueblo built on impossibly steep terrain where the streets are boardwalks, and the shops double as the people’s homes. We got to spend the good part of an afternoon wandering throughout town, gawking at the cypress and latter returning to a friend of Round River’s home to have dinner and celebrate Adam’s Birthday.

An aerial view of the expansive wetlands that often fill the soggy valleys of Patagonia’s steep watersheds.

The next day we were up early making moves to our study site, where we were going to help Kyla (former Round River instructor) collect water levels and vegetation data in a peat accumulating bog that is actively being harvested for sphagnum (a moss with economic value because it can be used as substrate for gardening). The first day we arrived we spent the afternoon romping around and getting familiar with the vegetation of the bog.

Alli Mullen (UVM) embraces the bog.

As the day went on, we learned how to take water depths of previously installed piezometers, and do one square meter vegetation plots along multiple transects. The next day was more of the same with the addition of taking soil samples of the bog.

Kyla holds out illustrative examples of peat (top) – organic matter that forms much of the soil – and muck (below) – which has little remaining particle. It’s clear as mud.

Here we witness the hunting behavior of Sundew (Drosera uniflora) among Bog tea leaves.

The harvesters scrape up heaps of sphagnum and leave it in bundles weighing up to 80kg.

On our last night there we had the opportunity to have dessert with the 4 harvesters who lived on site and talk about the work they were doing and learning the history of sphagnum harvest in the region. One of the harvesters was actually an environmental engineer from Bolivia who previously did educational work on the conservation of sphagnum bogs, but had to take the job as a harvester. It was very interesting to have the opportunity to pick their brains. Although the trip was short, the experience was as full as our boots were with water!