For the next three years, we will be taking undergraduate students to Svalbard to undertake research on the glaciers, rivers, lakes, and climate of the northern Arctic. This year, a small group traveled up to Svalbard to do some preliminary investigations and set up an automated weather station and other instruments that will record data for the next several years.
Svalbard is a territory of Norway. We will be working out of Longyearbyen, on the largest island named Spitsbergen
Longyearbyen, Svalbard - A long ways from most places (and only about 500 miles from the North Pole)
Longyearbyen has about 1,000 year-round residents, stores, restaurants, a hospital, and regular airplane service providing an ideal location for arctic research. We are collaborating with scientists at UNIS, a Norwegian university outpost located in Longyearbyen
We bought food and supplies in Longyearbyen. Here is the most critical part of our food stash (it has to last a whole 3 weeks!)
Our base camp out at "Kapp Linne", a prominent headland on the Greenland Sea coast. We stayed in a nice 1930's era 4 bedroom house at an old radio communication facility. Our work site is 5 kilometers away.
This is the land of the midnight sun - this photo was taken close to midnight!
Transporting our gear across the arctic coastal plain up to our field sites.
Reindeer - the only locals
Up at Linnevatnet (Lake Linne), our main research target. In the middle of July, there is still too much lake ice for boating...
... but we can walk on it!
... or drag the boat across it
Slowly the lake ice melts and we can push our way through narrow channels
Where there is not ice, watch out for mud!
It takes three people to extract that stuck boot (the fourth was laughing too hard!)
The lake is becoming more ice-free and we can get our work done
One of our rainiest days of work
Oh no, the ice came back! (winds blow the ice floes back and forth across the lake)
Setting up the weather station. We got all of our instruments set up
And our time is nearly up -
the boat arrives to take us home
A last view of the icy mountains
