Sunday 27 October 2013

Hi all

it's Ribanna writing this week's blog.

Since Luci's last blog mentioning the snow that has arrived I have to add: There is even more snow by now! It is incredibly white outside and awesomely beautiful.

But early October, the beautiful whiteness was temporarily destroyed by - guess what - a SANDSTORM! It all looked like a huge desert because after some strong winds from the East, all the sediments from down Adventdalen (the valley) were blown up and covered everything in dust. The same day, I was out in the field helping to prepare a seismic experiment. We've been out about 2.5 hours, wearing face masks and goggles, but still, we were entirely covered in dust so that we had to get some shelter every now and then and rinse our mouths with water. My camera was destroyed during this storm due to dust getting deep into it, even in between the lenses. It was an experience!

                                         Figure 1: Out in the sandstorm doing field work




Two weeks ago, a bunch of us went to the ice caves in the Longyearbreen (the glacier right behind our barracks) because it was cold enough for quite a while now to enter them safely. Before we got there, we hiked through a beautiful meltwater channel. It took us a while to find the entrance because last year's entrance has collapsed and there were several smaller ones. Eventually we crawled through some tunnel to get into a large cave that was spreading out quite a bit below the glacier. Tiny icicles started forming from the ceiling and we got in a fair distance. In the end, we tried to get even deeper by crawling along a really narrow and tight tunnel, but my butt (hehe, butt) wouldn't fit through the last bit (and no one else's butt, so it's not only mine!). After a while I started ignoring the ceiling because it was studded with cracks that you don't want to notice when you are below 10's of meters of pure ice and rocks. Quite happily, we didn't hear a single crack sound which would probably have freaked me out so it was a really enjoyable tour.
                                                   Figure 2: The entrance of the ice cave
                                        Figure 3: It's getting tight!

                                   

   Figure 4 and 5: Crawling through the tight and narrow tunnels in the ice cave. (Credits for fig 5: Nina Bakke)
                                                                  Figure 6: Beautiful meltwater channel (credits. Luci!)

Actually so enjoyable that I went back with Luci one week later after an attempt to build a snowman family (and she got stuck in the same tunnel). We had to realise doon that it is too cold for building anything out of this snow. It is powdery and wonderful, but we had to leave it where it was because it wouldn't stick at all. Next time, we will be armed with loads of water and decorations to get our snowman family.

In the same week, Luci and me along with two of my kitchen mates (Jøran and Michael) went on a night hike because the Aurora forecast was pretty good. We hiked up Sakrofagen at around 10 pm to realise that the moon was way too bright for good northern lights. So we sat down and just enjoyed the view (it was really bright). No one was expecting any visible activity anymore and the moment we decided to turn around because it got pretty cold, we were surprised by the most spectacular lightshow I have ever experienced: The Northern Lights were so intense that the brightness of the moon couldn't stop them from dancing green and red all over the sky, even right above the moon. Jøran could take some incredible pictures, see some of them right here:


                                         Figure 7: Enjoying the moonlight and the view. Not expecting Northern lights at all!  
                                                  (Credits: Jøran Solnes Skaar)
                                         Figure 8: Amazement! Right behind us! (Credits: Jøran Solnes Skaar)

Now some academic update: We are keeping on analysing the cores we have taken from the Marine Geology cruise I have written about in September. The last 2-3 weeks we spent a lot of time in front of microscopes counting Ice-Rafted Debris and analyzing foraminifera to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of our cores. It is pretty amazing to find these tiny, beautiful creatures in the sediments and to be able to tell the environmental circumstances from that (or even from their absence like in my sample where I couldn't find any). We have had a presentation on our results on friday including all the analyses we have done so far including magnetic susceptibility, shear strength, lithological records, grain size analysis, IRD and foraminifera. Next week, we are going to date our cores which allows us to tell what happened when. The next week we are also going to be really busy writing up two reports for both our modules. But as it is my birthday in a couple of days, we are planning on spending a night out on a glacier, having BBQ, mulled cider and northern lights.















 Figure 9: Foraminifera under the microscope


It also was UNIS' 20th anniversary three weeks ago. We had a big friday gathering with all drinks and even food (reindeer soup) for free. The FG group (Luci and I are members) prepared a UNIS related pub quiz which was a real success and made especially the UNIS staff amibitous to win a big bowl of chocolate.





                                                              Figure 10 and 11: UNIS 20 anniversary Friday Gathering

The week after that, the legendary "Icebreaker" party took place. Theme: Beach! First you think, that's kind of boring. But then you realise the potential in that theme. It's not only baywatch! It is starfish, sharks, birds, sand, rocks, water, boats, sunshine, cocktails, hawker's trays, cast aways and much more! I ended up as a starfish! And with a mouth full of marhmallows in one of the games we played. I was able to fit 16 marshmallows into my mouth, but I heard about 28 or even more.
                                                    Figure 12: Luci the shark, me the starfish


Yesterday, it was the last real day. Sunrise at 12.17h, sunset at 13.04h. Can you see the length of the day? Yes, it is 46 minutes! I joined a small group on a hike to one of the higher peaks (Trollsteinen) to see the sun for one last time, but unfortunately, it was really cloudy. At least, the clouds turned slightly pinkish in the end. The way down Trollsteinen was good fun because - as mentioned earlier - loads of very powdery snow plus bad vision (it's just all white) plus slippery ground made us slide down and bump into small piles of snow/rocks all the way. At least the snow cushioned the falls a bit. It is still not dark outside, more like a constant dawn (or is it dusk). But soon, we'll be able to count our moon hours instead of sun hours which is kind of the same, isn't it?!

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Winter is truly here.


It started snowing a few weeks ago and has been going pretty solidly since. Everything is white and it has changed the character of the place. It's a black and white world now :)

Trollsteinen
At UNIS everything is getting busier. There is not a lot of continuous assessment throughout the semester, for each module we have (had) to do an ungraded group report and presentation and a term project consisting of practical work, a report and a presentation.Of course the practical work is only now starting to come to an end so all the writing has to happen at the same time!
 
Longyearbyen at night from Longyearbreen
The days are getting shorter too but this doesn't mean you can't go outside, especially on clear nights when the moon is full it is still really nice up on the glaciers.

Thursday 10 October 2013

Luci - just adding some pictures from this eve that have got me a tad excited!!!





NORTHERN LIGHTS!!!!
 

Hi Everyone,

Luci typing here.

A few things to report since our cruise....

We have been busy in the lab analysing our cores, from our Arctic Marine Geology Module, for different things.... initially we have taken 15 samples from various points on each core (roughly each person then had three samples of their core) these were then weighed,wet and then dried over 24 hours and re-weighed to get the water content and also total mass weight.

The sediment was then re-hydrated, figure 1, to be sieved through 3 different sieve sizes for grains larger than 1mm, 125µm - 1mm, 63 -125µm and less than 63 could be calculated.
Figure 1 - Core HH13-18-GC being re-hydrated for grain size sorting.

Once sieved they were all re-weighed and then the percentage of grain size calculated - so for example: I was working on the bottom of my core; one of my three samples was taken from the 'bag' (which is any sediment that has fallen from the bottom of the gravity core in the cutter). This was mainly diamict and the grain sizes were:
>1mm 20%
125µm-1mm 17%
63 -125µm 13%
<63µm 50%

This analysis was done throughout the core in areas of interest or areas where transitions occurred into different sediment compositions.

Another lab we have done on our same samples is to look at each of the grain divisions and count the ice rafted debris (IRD) found, figure 2, - in the larger grain size divisions we also noted the type of sediments - e.g. metamorphic, sedimentary or igneous (although it was quite challenging from single crystals to tell if it was metamorphic or igneous!)
Figure 2 - Counting sediments!

We will also continue our analysis of these cores and go into looking at the Forams that are present.

Figure 3 - sediment load from Longyearelva 


We (Ribanna and I) have also done a couple of labs for Arctic Technology - Hydrology and Climate change module. One was looking at the amount of suspended sediment in the river systems around Longyearbyen. It consisted of filtering collected samples from various rivers at differing points - I picked the worse sample as it took over an hour to filter and was the last one there waiting even though i was one of the first to start!!! These were then oven dried over night and weighed the next day (filter weight known) and then the amount of grams of sediment could be calculated per liter of water (g/l) as we knew the sample volume of liquid. Mine obviously was the highest in the class - as the filter was so clogged and I had to use 2 in the end, figure 3 - at 4.8066 g/l from the Longyearelva close to UNIS.
We then had to work out the organic content within the sediment so ignited them at 480 degrees in a special oven for approx 20 mins, then put them in a desiccator for 15 mins so they wouldn't absorb humidity from the air on removal from the oven. Of the 4.8066g/l, 0.242 of my sample was organic matter - 5.03%

All interesting but quite alot of waiting for drying sediments!!

So that's the sciencey stuff right there!!!

Other fun things that have been happening is the SNOW has arrived and it has been beautiful, fig 4-8,







Figures 4-8 - mountains behind UNIS in the sunset!!

yet quite icy to walk on (entertainingly slippery, but the adrenaline shots in the morning sure wake you up) It hasn't snowed much since the first day but the temperatures have stayed pretty low and the sun doesn't get high in the horizon anymore so it looks like it could stick around now (YAY)!

Ribanna also lead the environmental group here, which i am part of too, and we got to organise the Flea market this year - which consisted of sorting through a ridiculous amount of clothing, baby stuff, toys, books and crap and making it in a display to sell for charity!! - it was incredible how much a small town could produce with the help from a bit of extra muscle to haul in the loads - thank you Allan, Greg, Michael, Tyler and the rest of the team .
Needless to say to make it more fun every 30 minutes or so we found a new outfit to try on, fig 9-10 or a cold beer to wash down the dust bunnies!!!

Figure 9 - Flea Market team

Figure 10 -sorting through everything!!
In the end it was very successful as we raised around 38,000 which is like £3,800!! Just from donated things/cake and coffee - not bad in 3 days work!! After the Fridays set up we continued to celebrate our hard work by a late night hot tub session under a clear night of stars! - It is not a bad life!

And the merriment will continue this week with the 20th anniversary of UNIS - which is very exciting! there is a lot of people coming and going with important titles! Being part of the Friday gathering group too (so many groups so little time) we have also been asked to prepare a Quiz for the big Friday gathering this week - where there will be around 300 people,speeches,reindeer soup, and free beverages!!!!

Also on the 18th we have the big student party to look forward too - Icebreaker - it is beach themed so I'm already getting my outfit together (pictures to follow) with the help from all the bargains found at the Flea market!!

I think that is all from me for now - hope your all enjoying following our time here as much as we are having it :)

Luci!!