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Thursday 16, August 2012

Map of Samoylov, Image: Max Heikenfeld, Alfred Wegener InstituteDuring the quiet week between the two sections of the expedition I've discovered that every newcomer on the island takes a walk around the island. After being here for four weeks it seems too late for me, but as they say; better late than never. It is also a good opportunity for you to get a guided tour around our island.

The island is total of about four square miles: it is slightly more than twice as large as the Tiergarten in Berlin, or one and a half times the Central Park in New York. The island is divided into two completely different landscapes that we will get to know during our walk.

The station is located at the southern end of the island in a relatively dry area right next to the rim of Lena. From there, our journey leads eastward along the cliff of the island. Here, on the south-eastern end, the river nibbles a piece of the island off every year making the polygons fall into the river, thus forming a bizarre cliff out of the overhanging peat carpet, ice wedges and grayish mud slides. This allows us to study the polygons as well as the interior of the island and to investigate the polygons last "weeks of life "before falling into the river almost like a sliced pie.
On our way to north, the coast gets softer. A small sandy beach is more reminiscent of the Baltic coast than a river, until at the northern tip of the island the sight all of a sudden changes. Behind the last corner of the cliff opens a view to the wide flooded plain, which forms the west side of the island. Instead of brown peat bog you look now on a seemingly infinite light green, completely flat plane.

This part of the island is flooded every spring by the the Lena river. Thus, the island grows in here by the deposition of sand and silt every year a little bit into the river, as a kind of counterpart to the loss that is observed at the other end.  

Before heading up the hill to our station, we see our swimming area, which is also used as a landing point for our small boat or sometimes also for larger vessels going to Tiksi or to more distant islands. On the left side we can see no longer the tundra, but the silhouette of the new research station, about which we will tell you in the coming days in more detail.

If you don't stop regularly to take pictures, it is possible to do this tour in just over two and a half hours. We did not pass this time our main focus areas, which are located mostly in the interior of the island, since they have already been mentioned enough in this blog. Also, we wore only hiking boots for today's tour, which kept us from going to the "wellie area" in the center of the island.

Greetings
Max

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Main page of the English translation of the blog "Tundra Stories": http://page21.org/blogs/59-samoylov
Original blog in German: http://www.awi.de/de/go/Tundra-Stories


Conducting the measurements, photo: Hanno Meyer, Alfred-Wegener-InstituteFriday, 17 August 2012

In my previous post I wrote, that I found it interesting how much the shape of the Muostakh island coastline changes. Now within a year, I learned that it can go much faster than I previously realized. Let´s start from the beginning…

There was pretty good weather the first days after we arrived to the island - sunshine and 15 to 20 degrees Celsius - we used the weather diligently to begin our work.

The coastal erosion of Muostakh Island was the main point of this year´s expedition. The area is particularly vulnerable to those kind of changes as the permafrost occurs there as always frozen sediments with high ice content. Due to summer temperatures, frozen deposits can be measured up to 20 meters down. There are also mechanical actions of the waves. Together they ensure that the coast retreats about ten meters per year. This value is the highest in the entire Arctic.

In order to record the retreat of the coastline I measured the entire kilometer in the most affected northeastern coast of the island. Similar research was done in 2011 and the satellite images were compared.

After the fair-weather days, there was a shift to significantly cooler and windier weather. With a further inspection of the coast I was surprised to find that the shoreline and the slope had changed again very strong. New coastal discontinuations were observed, and the material of past coastal abortions had been transported away by the waves. A few days with high temperatures and then heavy swell were sufficient so to move within a short period huge amount of material and alter the coastline significantly.

Greetings
Thomas
 
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Main page of the English translation of the blog "Tundra Stories": http://page21.org/blogs/59-samoylov
Original German blog: http://www.awi.de/de/go/Tundra-Stories


Watching the sun goes down...photo: Max Heikenfeld, Alfred-Wegener-InstituteThursday, 23 August 2012

Those phrases were frequently repeated in the past few nights in a rather surprised tone when the one entered the station in late hours.

Not so long, because just about two weeks ago, the polar day disturbed the night sleep of many but made the work more productive. Scientists were ensuring that after 8th of August the sun would start to go down again.

Those scientific papers made us very curious. We decided to stay up all night long on the 8th of August to see when exactly the day will meet the night again.

We sat and observed. Very slowly, the growing part of the sun started to disappear behind the horizon until only a thin strip was visible.

From that time every night, it was getting darker and darker. Scientists proved again, that the night was getting longer of about 20 minutes every day.

Until the 21st of September, the "normal" day – night rhythm will be maintained. After that, the polar night will arrive with the last sunset of the year at the beginning of November.

But at that time we will be sitting in much warmer place – Germany, annoyed about that days are so damn short again that we are not able to experience any of the sun, working at the university for a whole day!

Greetings from the North!!

Max
Friday, 24 August 2012


Cloudberries, photo: Christoph Müller

Moroshka, the cloudberry, is of particular importance for the residents of the Muostakh island (and thus also for the expedition team). They not only delight your eyes with strong yellow-orange-red tones in autumn color filled tundra. The vitamin-rich and very tasty cloudberries also represent a fresh and welcome addition to our daily food, whether it's freshly picked during a short break on the way, fresh or sweetened in the morning oatmeal or wheat porridge, the Russian “kasha” or as a freshly cooked jam.

Cloudberries are very common at Muostakh and the individual berries may well grow to considerable size (up to three centimeters in diameter have already been spotted and eaten immediately). Nevertheless of its presence on the island, the cloudberry is rather rare in the region and therefore it is for example very special for the residents of the city Tiksi. This led to an incidence, which was very important for our expedition team.

Russian helicopters around Tiksi usually arrive a few hours later than originally scheduled and then quickly, sometimes only after few minutes ("bystro, bystro") they fly out again from the island. This time, the helicopter, which came to pick up the German film crew from the German TV station RBB (Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg) arrived three hours before the scheduled arrival. This particular helicopter was not only to take the TV crew on board, but also to deliver two boxes of frozen ice samples to Tiksi. So, when the helicopter arrived, these samples were still in the fridge and the team, responsible for the samples, was about two kilometers from the camp (and from its samples).

This unexpected situation led to the design of a new sport in Muostakh: Long-distance sprint on the beach and through the tundra - in waders. Everybody who knows how waders are, knows that they are indeed very useful here in the Tundra, but not suitable for a long distance run. Actually, we would not have made it back to camp to pack the boxes with the samples, if there had been no cloudberries. The helicopter crew had scheduled for 45 minutes for berry picking and when I reached the camp after about 20 minutes, the helicopter was still there, thanks to its cloudberry picking crew.

So, ultimately, the cloudberries were responsible for ensuring that the boxes, filled with frozen samples, were transported by helicopter to Tiksi and the freezer was filled with new samples.

Thanks a lot to the cloudberry or how it is called in Russian: Bolshoe Spasibo Moroshka!

Greetings
Thomas
 
______________________________________
Main page of the English translation of the blog "Tundra Stories": http://page21.org/blogs/59-samoylov
Original German blog: http://www.awi.de/de/go/Tundra-Stories
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