Successful Permafrost Drilling in Svalbard April/May 2013

 

(Photo:Stefanie Härtel) Happy drill team after we finished the 14th borehole.... Finally, I returned to high-arctic Svalbard at 78° North, to one of my two PhD study sites. Our goal: to explore the permafrost variability on a land-form-scale in Adventdalen valley by permafrost drilling.

In May/April 2013 a newly mixed and international drill team met again in Longyearbyen. We consisted of technicians, Master-, Graduate- and PhD students that are related to two PAGE21 partners: the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) and the Center for Permafrost (CENPERM) at the University of Copenhagen.

 

This time, we directly collaborate between work package WP2 and WP3 and share permafrost samples from exactly the same borehole. As part of WP2, I am focussing on the cryo- and lithostratigraphy of the permafrost cores and how their ice-content varies with depth and between different landforms, to finally develop a geocryological map of Adventdalen valley. My WP3-colleagues from CENPERM will perform incubation tests on their samples to study carbon dynamics.

 

(Photo: Stefanie Härtel) Drill site 6 weathered bedrockThe weather was kind with us; it was remarkably calm most of the time and mild – but just cold enough to keep the rest of a thin and melting snow cover we really needed to travel in the valley by snow scooter.

During drilling, we luckily solved several almost-stuck-in-the-permafrost-situations. Of 14 small little steel pins, which save the connection between drill string and engine, only 13 broke :) and our one heavily wobbling connector surprisingly survived the entire campaign! With man-power and some luck we drilled core by core, borehole by borehole.

 

Within one week we drilled in total 14 boreholes; six of them are cased and equipped with thermistor strings to monitor the spatial variation of the thermal regime.

 

The boreholes are located at ten different sites representing the five most widespread periglacial landforms found in Adventdalen valley: a loess-terrace with different ice-wedge polygon types, three different-sized alluvial fans, solifluction sheets and lobes on slopes of various exposure, and into weathered bedrock.

(Photo: Stefanie Härtel) Four man against one wobbling drill string.29 meter of active-layer and permafrost samples was cored down to a maximum depth of 2.8 m. The cores ranged from perfectly frozen in ice-rich permafrost to a brittle mass when drilling into coarse-grained and ice-poor material and we sometimes had to hammer out the klasts.

 

In night sessions we split our 333 permafrost core segments in the UNIS freeze lab.

 

One half of the cores just arrived frozen in Copenhagen, while and the other half has already been processed at UNIS, particular thanks to Graham Gilbert, Master student at UNIS, who also equipped the boreholes with thermistor strings.

 

It was another insightful, very exciting and exhausting-as-it-should-be drilling campaign for me providing us very interesting study material and future monitoring data for our research within PAGE21.

 

(Photo: Stefanie Härtel) In the freeze lab TAK FOR SIDST, THANK YOU, DANKESCHÖN and TUSEN TAKK to all the members of our hardworking drill team, to UNIS logistics and my supervisors Hanne H. Christiansen and Bo Elberling who have been very supportive during planning and performing this campaign !

 

Click here to view more amazing photos from Svalbard drilling campaign. 

 

 

Written by Stefanie Härtel PhD student at CENPERM & UNIS

 

You can also find a beautiful b/w photo selection by Stephan Vogel here!