The PAGE21 project has now been officially closed. The four years of research came to an end on October 31 2015, leaving only...
PAGE21 project was featured in a plenary session "Permafrost in the 21st century" at the 2015 Arctic Circle conference in Reykjavik,...
The 2nd GTN-P National Correspondents Workshop, held in Quebec, Canada, 19-20 September 2015, accomplished the data policy and...
Summer 2013: Fieldwork for Remote Sensing – from Lena Delta to Abisko
(Photo: Elin Högström) On the Ice complex plateau with the Scandinavians. Johannes Petrone, Samuel Faucherre, Matthias Siewert. Wednesday, 18th of September 2013
Our expedition in the Lena Delta came to an end the other week and we are back in Europe. Finally! Due to weather related complications in Tiksi it took us one week to get home and the waiting around airports was a bit tiring.
Saturday the 31st was our last day of fieldwork on Kurungnakh.
Thereafter, the boat transported the Scandinavian team back to Tiksi and the rest of us remained on Samoylov to do the last fieldwork and pack.
I was very pleased about the work done at Kurungnakh. Four soil stations were installed for measurement for validation of satellite data. Surface soil moisture and temperature is now being measured at different depths of the uppermost layers.
(Photo: Antje Eulenburg) All of us from the expedition just before departure with the ship from Samoylov to Tiksi.For the purpose of validating ASCAT derived surface soil moisture, which is a coarse scale product, it makes sense to place the stations within large representative land cover types. Accessibility is another criterion that needs to be considered, notably for the revisiting.
Furthermore, soil samples were brought home from each site. They will be used for soil specific calibration of the sensors that are installed at the stations.
For validation of another type of satellite derived data (TerraSAR-X), measurements were done during the days of satellite passes over a number of prepared grids.
The last week in field was also busy with exchanging help with colleges, such as reading data and reprogramming stations, collecting probes and more.
Thereafter, it was time to pack.
(Photo: Elin Högström) A sunny morning view in Tiksi – a town where we spent some days waiting for an airplane to take us back to Yakutsk.The tents and all the equipment was brought back from Kurungnakh and the workshop and laboratory was also to be cleaned out for the season. Much of the material and samples was to be sent back to Europe.
As sad as it was to leave Samoylov, it was nice to get a few days of rest in my old home town Uppsala, Sweden, before heading to the next fieldwork location.
In fact, I write this text while sitting in the bus 91 from Kiruna, which is the very last travel step to get to the research station in Abisko.
Written by Elin Högström