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