In this article I'd like to shed some light on Esther's questions and write about my first day in the field yesterday. I'm really happy to receive questions about whatever you think I could answer. It makes writing a lot easier. Therefore thank you Esther!
How many students are we?
The courses at UNIS are comparably small. In the geology bachelors courses we are 20. As a male I'm part of a minority. There are only 5 of us. This extreme ratio is not reflected in UNIS overall
but still there are far more women studying up here.
As a German speaker I'm rather part of a majority. I would suggest that they make up the second largest share of students (after Norwegians) but there are also many from the UK. In general most
people are European, quite some come from North America, while Asia, Africa, Australia and South America are only represented with very few students.
Do we split the courses for trips?
Yes and no. This depends very much on the task. Yesterday we worked in small groups of three to four people in the field. But that is not necessary. UNIS has enough snow scooters to supply a group of 20 students and their company. Usually a group consists of the students their lecturers, field assistants and at least one technician. A technician is a hybrid of a mechanic and a mountain guide. They are more or less responsible for everything regarding equipment and safety.
UNIS has its own department to handle the logistics for both educational and scientific fieldwork in the Arctic. It provides us with all the necessary equipment and knowhow. Of course Esther is right that there is a lot of equipment needed. And during the field season when a lot of scientists and students go out they also rent additional snow scooters.
Money money money
The Norwegian oil is paying for our field trips. We don't have to pay for anything up here except food (10 - 20 € per field day) as far as I know. This is way nicer than back home.
Fieldwork
Our task was to walk across the main valley (Adventdalen) right outside Longyearbyen to take temperature measurements and weather observations. After picking up the safety equipment e.g. rifle and flare gun our professor dropped us off right outside the town and we started walking. At first we weren't too exited about our task because other groups had a way shorter walk and could sleep in.
After about an hour of walking we reached the other side of the valley. We were going to take a break behind a cabin to be sheltered from the wind. Instead we got invited in to warm up. It turned out that the guy living in the cabin was a former geology professor at UNIS who works on the mainland now. He kept his cabin on Svalbard and comes up here for vacation every now and then. With a hot cup of tea we easily spent one and a half hours with him chatting about UNIS, field trips and the polar bear that once broke into his cabin.
In the end we probably had the nicest field day of all the groups. But yet we don't know how we should explain the temperature anomaly in our dataset...
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Esther (Wednesday, 17 February 2016 13:29)
Hej Nik, how are you doing? Has the sun already said hello to you this year? Cheers, Esther