Icebergs and Blackberries

Up around the northwest of Spitsbergen, with my course

2007-09-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

Dad's Visit

2007-09-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Mid-August, my dad arrived walked off the plane and into Svalbard. It was a brilliantly sunny day and the fjord was crazy blue and windy.

Walking to UNIS in the morning:
The view from my window in the summer. These mountains have now been completely covered in snow during several storms.
Walking around town, with the summer cottongrass in bloom:
Dad made me once again stop and smile at the strange sights of Longyearbyen that now are becoming normal: girls in pink jackets on bikes with rifles, and homes with a set of skiis and a set of snow mobiles for each person:

After a week of long days of fieldwork and labwork and boatrips, I figured Dad's time wouldn't be complete without a weekend visit to the to the Bjoerndalen student cabin. A bid crowd assembled; humans and dogs and reindeer. Jonathon waits for the slow pokes to cross the river:

We finally make it... Dad with wet pants and still smiling.

The calm fjord...

Nicole, Tine, and Sanna test out the guitar outside the cabin:

Pierre and his Ukranian camera:
Mikko and the ever-taunting guitar.
The whole crew headed home: Cecilia, Oleg, Dad, a resolutely-enthusiastic Jonathon, Tine, James, Pierra, and Johanna.

We visited Barentsburg, a completley Russian mining town which is about 2 hours away by ship. The whole place seems a world away from Longyearbyen (ah, the psychological effects of architecture!) and a little piece of Russia (but crumbling and partially retaken by the birds).

On the way, the characteristic lush green slopes below a cliff where thousands of birds breed (and shit).
And finally, just so Dad left Svalbard totally exhausted, we walked up above town to the Longyear glacier on his last night, where in the moraines you can find relatively easily amazing fossils. Huge leaves and shells and pine trees... all from a time when Svalbard was closer to the equator and the climate was warm and wet enough to create the coal that now powers Longyearbyen and thus this computer.

Midnight fossil hunting, a Svalbard specialty:

Thanks, Dad!

July-ish

2007-09-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

One of the field sites in Adventdalen, free of snow mid summer with clouds looming.

The main street. Yes, this is pretty much all of it. If you walk towards the glacier in the background, you'll reach the barrack that I live in.

The student cabin ina nearby valley called Bjoerndalen:
It looks out onto the greater part of the fjord, and is available anytime you want to walk out there with some coal to make a fire and boil drinking water from the river. Amazing.

The view on the walk to the cabin.

Some halting chords with coal-y fingers.

Marco, pasta extraordinaire and maker of ice cubes, me, and the sun.

On another weekend, a trip up to Nordenskjiold, the tallest mountain nearby:
Jonathon, Sanna, James, Elke, and Lucas.

The view down to town, I live in the colorful cluster of buildings in the middle of the valley.
At the top, in the sun:

On the way down, Lucas skiied the glacier while the rest of us ran in giant moon leaps down the snow. Not such a bad view for sking (Lucas is the dot):

A Sunday Ski

2007-06-17T14:11:00.001-07:00

This afternoon was stunning- it was a sunny and beautiful day and so we drove up to the top of the plateau, which is still totally snow covered, to ski.

The way up was great. We put skins (strips of furry cloth that stick to the bottom of your skis) on our skis so that they would only move forward, and climbed up a mountain- here's the view down to the Adventdalen valley and Isfjorden:

Going down was a whole other matter. Without your heels attached to your skis turning is interestingly difficult in spring snow, and so my introduction to telemarking was mostly: slide, freakout, turn, fall.... slide, shout, turn, fall...

Here, Jonathon shows us how it's done:

Oh my

2007-06-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

The big news in Longyearbyen this week was the arrival of the Frozen Five- a group of five former UNIS students who skiied their way from Longyearbyen, all the way down to the southern-most tip of Spitsbergen and then up to the northernmost point and back! The trip was a total of 80 days and over 1000 km, and they arrived tired, dirty and happy last Wednesday.
Their route can be found on their blog, which is really nice (frozenfive.org).

A picture of them in the local newspaper, Svalbardposten:

I was out doing fieldwork in the valley near Longyearbyen when they appeared on the horizon, so we got to see them head in towards civilization..

Otherwise, the weather has had moments of the spectacular, with sunny, brilliant days or nights. Here's the view out of my window on a good day:

These are the two Scottish guys that I've been doing fieldwork with- James and Jonathon. Here they were simulating geese grazing, to see the effect of intensive grazing (which completely pulverizes the mossy tundra) on the soil temperature.

To simulate really intense grazing, we were cutting chunks out of the tundra with a bread knife! It's suprisingly cake-like.

A great skua was checking us out- I think it was hoping to nest nearby.

Untouched mossy tundra, with some brown Dryas, which will green up now that it's out from under the snow.

This Friday evening was particularly spectacular- totally still and warm- and I got a chance to accompany two guys who were going on a diving trip close to the mouth of the fjord. Here's the shore, where there's a UNIS sailing club shack with kayaks, sailboats, windsurfers (!!!), and diving equipment. And of course, summer bonfires.

The arctic terns have returned!!

Heading out of the fjord,

Thick-billed murres and glaciers:

Mikko is trying to get himself psyched up for going in to 2C water. Ei!

We landed at an old Russian mining town, which had been completely abandoned, so the kittiwakes had taken over the buildings and all the mining equipment (and a huge sculpture of a sickle) remain on the beach.

To dive in the Arctic, they have to waer dry suits with air constantly being pumped in. The suits, therefore, are completley air tight around their necks (yes, it's as uncomfortable as it sounds, but pretty awesome to watch it go on). To compensate, they must wear tons of weights. With it all on, they're now exactly graceful land creatures.

I had the easy job of sitting in the unbelievably warm sun and (kind of) watching for polar bears while they dove.

Checking out the town. It's incredibly eery. Many settlements on Svalbard have been abandoned, and often they are left just as they were when people where there.

On the way home, some clouds blew in and we had a bit of a sunset (at 3am).

Ready, go!

2007-06-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

Hello from Svalbard! It's snowing here. Ha, yeah. But today was also the first peek of sunshine through the clouds since I've arrived, so the afternoon has been alternating between curlycues of snowflakes and sun shining on the peaks across the fjord. I'm not sure where to start with this blog venture, so hopefully some pictures will remind me.

Before I left, I had tea in San Francisco with some suspicious-looking Maugers

and explored a candy shop of dreams...

Soon enough, I was flying northwards. At 1am last Monday I arrived in Longyearbyen, Svalbard - and transitioned from the summery warmth of Oslo to the foggy chill of a Longyearbyen under a cold marine layer. Here's the view out my room in Barrack 13- without the fog, it looks directly down to town and out onto the fjord!

Here's my room:

The barracks where the students live are located in an area outside of town called Nybyen, where the miners used to live. They're toasty. The walk into town or to the university (UNIS; www.unis.no) is a good 30 minutes along this road:

..and guarantees that you spend at leat an hour hiking in the crisp air each day. Here's part of town, with UNIS being the big, angular brown building near the fjord.

The UNIS building is all made of copper, and so when it first was built about 5 years ago it shone like a bright penny beacon, but it's unfortunately now modest and oxidized. Inside, it looks like a super Ikea, with fitted wood and bright colors. Here's the biology department corridor where I get to have an office! Lots of tea breaks.. they know how to do things here.

The professor who I'll be working with: Elisabeth Cooper. She's super nice and enthusiastic, a botanist from Britian who has lived and researched in Svalbard for nearly six years, and a singer in the local church choir.

We've been out on fieldwork in the nearby Adeventdalen, a simply gigantic valley near Longyearbyen, where she is organizing research on snow fences (to look at the possible effects of greater precipitation, a prediction of climate change, on the vegetation). The snow fences look like so and cause increased snow pack by slowing snow-laden wind down so it drops it's load.

Also, she's doing research with open top chambers (OTCs), the plastic structures below, to look at the response of plants to warmer temperatures. The OTCs passively increase the temperature of the air and ground within them by working like a greenhouse.

Looking up Adventdalen

Saxifraga oppositifolia is the first brave flowerer, it just came out this week!

A vacation hut in the valley

I really am here!
Around town there are lots of reindeer,
and occasionally a fox! (on the snow, in half winter- half summer pelt)
This morning (Sunday), I went over to the Longyearbyen Church to hear Elisabeth sing, and the congregation was having an outdoor service with pastors in fleeces, red cheeks, and snow flurries:

The children's and adult choirs

The walk home to Nybyen:

Warm thoughts from this still-kinda-frozen-but summer-is-coming-fast island!