Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Some from our expedition group - me included - already said goodbye to the island the 30th of July. After four weeks of field work we were of course looking forward to go home, but we were also a bit sad to leave our little island. This summers Samoylov expedition was a really good one and we did almost everything we had planned for. All instruments worked, the snow measuring station was successfully set up and many soil samples were taken. All other expedition members also made a very nice impression on me. Sure, there were some things that went wrong! We surveyed for exmaple the wrong lake on the neighboring island "Kurungnakh" or almost sunk our drill equipment in the permafrost.

But by and large, everything has gone very well and it is already clear that we will come back home with a great amount of data. We must wait, however, a little before we are able to elicit new secrets about the permafrost and the Arctic climate. The data obtained is first passed to our Russian colleagues, who after the expedition is over, sent it to us in Germany. In addition of been exported through two countries there is also climate data requirements and controls.

On the way back from Samoilov to Tiksi we were rewarded with fantastic summer weather. It was just great, since we did not travel by helicopter, but with a ship. The small river boat with the name "405" brought us back to the Bykovskaya sidearm of Lena in the roughly 120 km away city Tiksi. At the airport in Tiksi we could briefly greet the new expedition team, who will now go up to Samoylov and the island Muostakh and stay until beginning of September. We, on the other hand, travelled again two days on the plane through Russian capital Moscow and on to Berlin.

I wish all those who are now travelling to the Lena Delta all the best. Here below you can find some images from the expedition.

Greetings, Moritz

 

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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