The main objective of the project is to establish a plant monitoring programme in order to investigate how the diversity, functioning and composition of the terrestric ecosystems along the Young Sund are related to climatic variations. In addition to providing some of the first data on variations in plant community composition and arthropod diversity in the area, the study will provide a platform for long-term terrestric studies in the area. The project seeks to answer the following questions:

Benthic carbon turn-over is essential for coastal ecosystem functioning. In areas where light reach the sediment benthic organism may add significantly to system productivity through photosynthesis. Concurrently, both photic and non-photic sediments are important for the mineralization (and preservation) of organic material. The changing Artic climate is predicted to decrease sea ice cover and increase terrestrial run-off with consequences for the availability of light and carbon to the benthic community. The present project aims to

Our SERF-2014 research project looks at linking physical properties of snow-covered sea ice and corresponding radar measurements. We use a C-band (5.5 GHz) fully-polarimetric scatterometer to measure the scattering response of sea ice. It has similar characteristics to the Canadian satellite RADARSAT-2. The signal measured by the radar is sensitive to the geophysical properties of the snow-covered sea ice such as roughness of the air-snow and snow-ice interfaces as well as snow temperature, density, and brine content, and sea ice temperature and salinity.

Sea ice pressure ridges are important ice features to navigation, climatological studies, and offshore exploration.  Ice operations such as these prefer to operate in areas of open water or thin ice, and to completely avoid potentially unmanageable rough ice features, such as icebergs, multiyear ice floes, and sea ice pressure ridges.  This field project aims to undertake a first of a kind experiment that will look in situ at how microwave backscatter over sea ice pressure ridges changes when snow cover, radar incidence angle, and ridge height parameters change.  Understanding how microwave

Climate change, associated with large-scale anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, results in warming of the Arctic leading to sea ice retreat, melting of glaciers and thawing of permafrost. Changes in freshwater export from the Arctic Ocean have the potential to alter ocean convection in the North Atlantic, while mobilization of large organic carbon stocks in Arctic watersheds (most notably those trapped inpermafrost) have the potential to accelerate the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide1.

The overall aim is to determine the extent changing sea ice condition affects the surface fluxes over different marine  surfaces within a high Arctic fjord system. We will examine to what extent temperature influences the surface flux of carbon, and other climatically important gases, in addition to an on-going focus onto the effects of sea ice life stages on the surface exchange of carbon containing gases within the marine cryosphere.

Field site: Daneborg Research Station

This project aims to document how the physical and biogeochemical properties of sea ice affect the exchanges of major greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O) across the double air-sea ice-ocean interface, as well to examine: 

The effects of climate change are having impacts locally and hemispherically and as a result are altering sea ice processes. This research will lead to a better understanding of the geophysical and thermodynamic processes occurring at the ocean-sea ice-atmosphere (OSA) interface as the snow melt, melt pond evolution and sea ice breakup periods occur.