Student Highlights - A Greenland Odyssey
Stephanie Allard, a senior Earth Sciences major from Woonsocket, R.I., spent part of August collecting ice samples to gain a better understanding of climate change. Below is her diary of the experience.
Stephanie Allard in Greenland
Monday, August 10, 2009
Our Greenland expedition begins today, on a small plane out of the Bangor Airport. We are heading to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, which is at the end of a fjord on the western coast. The town is about an hour from the ice sheet. We will spend about ten days taking over 500 ice samples from our ice sheet site, camping the entire time. I am traveling with the Climate Change Institute’s Paul Mayewski (Director), Andrei Kurbatov, and Doug Introne, as well as Brittany Gilman, a classmate.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
We arrived at our campsite yesterday afternoon, right near the edge of the Greenland ice sheet. We had been traveling for almost three full days, so it’s nice to finally settle down for a while. We flew from Bangor to New York City, and then to Paris, France and Copenhagen, Denmark. We were able to stay overnight in Copenhagen and toured the city — it was gorgeous! I had never been to Europe, so this was great to see. After Copenhagen, we flew back across the Atlantic Ocean to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. There is a tiny airport, a tiny town, and hardly any people. We drove about an hour out on a dirt road to get to our site, and saw amazing features along the way. Once the ice sheet came into sight, so did massive moraines, ice caves, roche moutonees, and polished rocks, all formed by the ice. I was incredibly excited to see all of this. From here, we will start our research on the ice sheet, collecting ice blocks, as well as samples for our own theses. We will venture onto the ice tomorrow morning!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
We began our isotope sampling on the ice sheet today, setting up a rope and flags to mark our path for tomorrow. This will be a tedious job, but it’s very important for this study. We will take almost 500 of these small ice samples, spanning almost 50 meters of ice. Two days ago, we did iridium sampling in a large trench, filling large bottles with ice cut out with an axe. Lots of time was spent labeling and recording everything both in the field and back here at the camp site. We have been exploring the area around the campsite, seeing lots of reindeer, musk oxen and even a tiny Arctic fox. It is absolutely beautiful here, with lakes, hills, and of course the amazing wildlife.
