Spring expedition to the Disco Island completed

14 June 2024, by Oliver Kaufmann

Photo: Oliver Kaufmann (IfB)

The snowmobile makes it easy to transport frozen drill cores back to the laboratory at the research station

Photo: UHH/O.Kaufmann

View of Qeqertarsuaq and the ice-covered Disko Bay

Photo: UHH/O.Kaufmann

Eerie atmosphere on the snowmobile route across the lake

Photo: UHH/O.Kaufmann

When measuring methane emissions, hoses lead the air from the hood to the gas analyzer and back again. The gas concentration is updated every second.

Photo: UHH/O.Kaufmann

The first geese

Photo: UHH/O.Kaufmann

View of the bay of Qeqertarsuaq

Our teams from the MOMENT and CLICCS projects have completed their work on Disko Island. While expedition leader Dr. Evan Wilcox and field assistants Birgit Grabellus and Oliver Kaufmann have returned to Hamburg, PhD student Selina Undeutsch is heading straight to the International Conference On Permafrost (ICOP) in Whitehorse, Canada, where she will present the first results of her research.

Over a two-month period, Dr. Evan Wilcox and Oliver Kaufmann took snow, water and soil samples in Blæsedalen (Valley of the Winds), north-east of Qeqertarsuaq. In addition, a flow channel and water pressure sensors were installed in the course of a side stream of the Røde Elv (Red River), which runs through the valley. They want to use the isotope signature in the water content of the samples to estimate how much snow infiltrates into the soil during the spring melt. The concentration of dissolved carbon in the water provides information about the lateral carbon transport and balance.

One of the biggest challenges this year was the timing of the snowmelt. After some areas were already free of snow in mid-April, the researchers were under time pressure to complete all the experiments that were supposed to be finished before the snow melted. But then 70 cm of fresh snow fell and another cold phase set in. Field measurements and sampling, which were planned after the end of the snowmelt, had to be delayed until the last day.

Last year, Selina Undeutsch had already carried out flux measurements of methane between soil and atmosphere and along moisture gradients during the summer period. As the measuring points were not yet accessible due to all the snow, she continued her measurements on the snow surface with the active support of Birgit Grabellus. With the help of a pipe and the mobile gas analyzer, concentration profiles were also created in the snow in order to better understand the methane dynamics in the snow and to supplement the balance.

Since the middle/end of May, student Karl Kemper has arrived on Disko and is also continuing his measurements from last year. For his final thesis at the German Research Center Potsdam (GFZ), he will be studying methane fluxes from the lake until July. While the researchers from the University of Hamburg are now returning to Germany, research at the Arktisk Station is continuing. More researchers from MOMENT will be arriving soon.

UHH/O.Kaufmann