Our last day in Greenland!

Today was our last full day in Greenland so we took the day to pack up our gear for the Air National Guard flight tomorrow am. This afternoon we played tourist and drove up towards Lake Ferguson to get a birds eye view of Kangerlussuaq.

You can see the airport in the top of this photo. We are staying at KISS- the third long building from the right of the photo. Meltwater from the upvalley ice flows under the bridge (center bottom of photo). If you look closely you'll see a C-130 (plane) at the airport.


Same view, but including the meltwater river that flows past Kangerlussuaq to the ocean. Are you wondering why Kangerlussuaq is so flat? It was built on a delta (geology is everywhere!).


Things that make a glacial geologist happy: glacial erosional features! We found these on some beautiful exposed glacially polished bedrock this afternoon.


We celebrated our last night in Kangerlussuaq with pizza- this one is muskox and red pepper- not a flavor you can find in the US!


Our sole group photo (in front of the map of Greenland of course!). From left to right: Lenore Grenoble, Simone Whitecloud, Ross Virginia, Laura Levy, Meredith Kelly, Xiahong Feng. (And yes, that is a pool table in front of us- KISS has a great facility here!)
We leave Greenland for New York early tomorrow am and then drive back to New Hampshire in the afternoon. I'm sure we'll take lots of pics on the way home and post them soon.

back through time -- a visit to the ice margin

Our team has grown yet smaller: Ross left this morning for Nuuk to make arrangements for our Greenlandic cultural studies. The four remaining members of our team hiked across three ridges and forded two rivers to get to the ice margin. The journey to the ice brought us back into spring -- above is the first Dryas integrifolia we have seen in bloom.


I can't control my excitement about the ice margin. Meredith and Laura collected rock samples from two Little Ice Age moraines, Xiahong got water samples, including from a waterfall on the glacier, and I collected plants that were growing on the LIA moraine (a 150-600 year old moraine).


View from the Little Ice Age moraine of the ice margin to the right and bedrock and a distant lake to the left.


Retreating ice margin -- 'dirty' ice at the bottom indicates retreat.


Laura, Meredith and Xiahong were all grins after our hike back from the ice margin (visible in the background).


Beautiful metamorphic rock (gneiss)

Laura shares her excitement with the glacial polish.

Camping near the ice margin

This weekend we packed up our gear and went to camp closer to the ice margin. This was partially to save us from the long drive up the valley every day and also to do a test run for camping with the whole Dartmouth IGERT group next summer. On our way to our campsite on Friday we stopped in Moraine Valley to collect some samples.


Drilling my first boulder!
Meredith is teaching me how to choose boulders to sample for Berylium-10 dating and how to sample them. Lots to learn! After taking complete field notes on the location of the boulder and its surroundings, we mark the latitude/longitude and elevation of the site, measure the dip/dip direction of the sampling area, and also measure the amount of shielding from the surrounding landscape (using a clinometer). Then we sample!


We arrived at our campsite on Friday evening and set up our camp. KISS outfitted us with these brand new (or like brand new) tents and a great kitchen set. It was a beautiful spot to camp and we had great camping weather.


Xiahong and Simone work on keying plants in the evening in our camp kitchen.


The tables are turned. Ross interviews/records Simone at camp one evening. He asked her "What do you like most about graduate school?"


On Saturday Meredith and I hiked up to the ice margin from camp. After hiking for an hour or so we came across this calving ice margin. We sat and ate our lunch (from where this photo was taken) and watched/heard chunks of ice fall. Pretty impressive!


Meredith atop the Little Ice Age moraine. This moraine is very young (500 yrs or less) and marks the last time the ice advanced.


The Little Ice Age moraine (right) and the edge of the ice sheet (left).


Meredith collecting plants for isotope analysis.


Simone, Ross and Meredith work together on a transect.