Permafrost temperatures

 

Weighing samples from the vegetation removal experiment (Photo: M. Johansson).Abisko is one of the sites that are monitoring permafrost temperatures and are contributing to work package 2 in PAGE21. Boreholes were made on three mires in 1980 by Jonas Åkerman, but with the technology available at that time and the lack of electricity at the sites, it was only possible to measure temperatures when people were visiting the area from Lund University. From 1980 to 2002, permafrost temperatures where hence only recorded twice per year, one week in May and one week in September when people could bring car batteries to the site.

 

During the International Polar Year (www.ipy.org) new boreholes were installed in 2008 within the PYRN-TSP (Permafrost Young Researchers Network – Thermal State of Permafrost) project. The new boreholes were instrumented with loggers that can record daily ground temperatures. Unfortunately, during last winter the loggers were stolen and the boreholes were sabotaged at Storflaket, so we had to make three new boreholes in April to eb able to continue to monitor the temperatures in the permafrost.

 

Sorting out the wires; measuring at what depths the sensors should be put and marking it (Photo: J. Bengtsson).Today we have prepared the new loggers so that they can be installed in the field tomorrow. 4 sensors recording temperature are being installed in each borehole at different depth from 1 to 7.5 m (which is the maximum depth of the boreholes).

 

When we had been playing with the wires all day, we spent the evening with weighing old removed vegetation from the vegetation removal experiment (see day 2 for further details).

 

 

 

 Margareta