Learning how to program and use our loggers and sensors. Photo by Elin Högström.The night train from Berlin (with me in it) arrived at Wien Meidling at 6h20 the other morning, so I am back at work in Vienna again. 

 

The meeting at Alfred Wegener Institute last Friday was my second occasion to visit Potsdam. The hosting was just as great as the last time, especially the amazingly tasty brunch, including everything from fresh bread and cakes to cheese, dried salmon and home made pesto, that Julia Boike and all the others had prepared! It gave us energy for the whole afternoon. 

 

Participating during the meeting for preparing fieldwork in Samoylov 2013 were Birgit Heim, Anne Morgenstern, Moritz Langer, Sofia Antonova, myself, and also partly Annett Bartsch via Skype.

 

We started off by presenting our current work, as well as our visions of the fieldwork to take place this summer. Sofia Antonova is a PhD student at AWI, who started just a couple of weeks ago and who will be working on the topic subsidence, including so when at the Lena Delta. The two of us will be installing the same kind of stations to measure soil moisture and temperature over time.

 

The topic of Anna Morgenstern is degradation of ice-rich permafrost by thermal erosion, and she is also interested in soil moisture for this purpose. Birgit is my secondary supervisor, together with whom I will be working quite a bit at Samoylov. Annett works with me at TU Vienna, she leads the WP5 and she is my supervisor. 

 

We had some really interesting discussions and exchange that is indeed useful for this summers work. The meeting ended with an improvised course in how to program and use our loggers and sensors, lead by Moritz in his office.

 

Today, I placed an order for additional devices. If all goes as promised it should be ready and delivered well before we have to send all the material. 

 

Thanks to all of you at AWI for hosting this meeting in such a nice way and for the valuable discussions and new information that I gained. Thanks also to Hugues Lantuit, for the little guided tour around the AWI (and for the Berlin tips)!

 

Elin