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Herschel Island 2013: Field work preparation
(Photo: B.Radosavljevic) George and Hugues loading the truck with the freight to CanadaThursday, June 27th 2013
Lots of things happened since we posted the last Herschel Island 2012 entry at the end of August 2012.
We spent hour after hour in the lab analyzing vegetation and permafrost samples, reworking the data from the weather stations, melt water channel, near shore zone bathymetry, and now we're back at it, planning again food for more than 26 days and for at least 9 hungry field scientists and a lot of other things.
In December 2012, we got the chance to join the 8th Annual Scientific Meeting of Arctic Net, Vancouver. There we met many Canadian scientists with similar research focus with whom we could network.
In particular, this meeting resulted in cooperation with scientists from the Canadian ADAPT (Arctic Development and Adaptation to Permafrost in Transition). This Canadian project brings together 15 laboratories across Canada, and is an excellent contact for us people from Germany working in Canada.
(Photo: H.Lantuit) George and Boris installing the instruments on a float on a lake close to Potsdam in Spring 2013Since February we spent a lot of our time with logistics, contracts, licenses, modifications and testing of the equipment, software and equipment training, and finally packing 30 huge boxes with 866kg.
This year's plans are even more ambitious than last year's, and we hope to be at least as successful this time around. Therefore we hope for great weather, and again for such a great team spirit.
Our freight already left two weeks ago and at the moment is on its way from Vancouver to Inuvik. We had to wait until the Mackenzie River had thawed completely so the ferry could start again.
May is usually tricky to get your equipment via the Dempster Highway to Inuvik. In winter the trucks can rush over the frozen river and in summer they can take the ferry. Just the melting season in May is tricky...So everything has to be planed around May as a transport month.
So the last days of June are filled with group meetings, scientific field planning, food logistics, completing all left over e-mails, logistics, medical examinations and administration.
(Photo: F. Schirrmeister) Hugues won the best supervisor prize from the POLMAR Graduate School at the Alfred Wegener Institute We also presented our research to the public at „The Long Night of Science" in Potsdam. In addition, AWI Potsdam had the pleasure of hosting institute-wide PhD Student Conference, where all of us presented our research.
And lastly, we celebrated Dr. Hugues Lantuit being awarded the "Best Supervisor Prize" at our institute's employee appreciation day. As we are leaving on June 27th, we are trying to soak up as much sun and summer as possible.
We're especially enjoying this summer's early 35°C, which is great swimming in the lakes, and eating lots of strawberries.
Enjoy your summer, too!
Written by Stefanie and Boris