Field work at Svalbard

– By: Martine van den Heuvel-Greve –

The Wageningen research team at Svalbard. From left to right: Isolde Puts, Martine van den Heuvel-Greve, Tinka Murk. (© Tinka Murk)

Arrival at Svalbard

This year we have a 3-women’s team of the Wageningen University and Research Centre conducting fieldwork in Ny-Ålesund, the research station at northwest Svalbard: Tinka Murk (professor in Marine Animal Ecology at Wageningen University), Isolde Puts (former student of Wageningen University) and Martine van den Heuvel-Greve (polar scientist at IMARES Wageningen UR).

One of the yellow houses of the Dutch Arctic station. (© Tinka Murk)

We arrived in Ny-Ålesund on Monday June 13 2016, after a marvellous flight over the glaciers. Here we are staying in one of the yellow houses of the Dutch Arctic station, managed by Maarten Loonen of the Arctic Centre of the University of Groningen. We share the station with bird scientists of the University of Groningen that monitor the reproduction success of the barnacle goose and the arctic tern.

Read here for our experiences.

Aerial view over Svalbard. (© Tinka Murk)

Aerial view over the glaciers. (© Tinka Murk)