Fieldwork Norwegian style

This picture might need some explanation ;) In the tube is a sediment sample, fresh from the bottom of a fjord from around 80 m deep. Even though I would love to do soil drilling on 80 m, I did not go down there myself to get it. Instead we put the black tube into a bigger metal tube, of which you can see the tip in the left side. This special tool was lowered by a rope to the bottom, where it closes automatically. Then you can take the tube with sample out, as we are doing on the picture. We opened it the next day, involving some kind of circular saw (don’t worry, everyone still had their fingers;)).

This was on one of the six field days we had so far.  Like I said in the last story we went in our first week on a two day trip to a glacier. The first day we went out for a hike on the glacier, where we were connected to each other by a rope and had to use our ice axes and crampons (which are spikes for under your shoes) to stay put. Highlight of the day was a really small but really awesome ice tunnel that you could only exit by climbing straight up through a hole in the ice. Day 2 of the trip had an easier but longer hike over the glacier and ended with a tour through narrow nearby caves.

Than we had two hikes, one taking us up on a mountain to a beautiful view, while learning about the ecology on the way. The other one took us past a river back to the source of the river, yet another glacier. Along this river we made several stops to gather hydrographical data such as river flow velocity (with the good old throwing a stick in a river method), temperature, oxygen levels, etc. The day after we applied the same methods on a lake, this time form small rowing boats. We had to attach the boats together, resulting in a somewhat wobbly measurement station ;)

There are still some excursions to come as well. First we’ll have two excursions to a mountain range, where we will look at the geology, which is perfect in this landscape. After that we will go to an island for a week, adding everything together so we are good prepared for our first exam.