The TerrACE project field work is in full swing in 2018, so it seems like as good of a time as any to start sharing our work a bit more broadly!

Our fantastic students have been busy sampling Svalbard’s rivers, fjords and coastlines, and our freezers are starting to fill up with water, plankton and amphipods. These days our focus is starting to shift to our main field campaign in August, where we’ll do our most comprehensive field campaign of the TerrACE project, with extensive sampling of river water, coastal waters and sediments, and nearshore plankton, benthos and fish.

We’re hoping to get a nice set of samples to help us characterise terrestrial inputs to Svalbard’s coastal waters, and to answer some of TerrACE’s main research questions regarding the effects of these inputs on coastal biogeochemistry, ecology (e.g. pelagic and benthic community structure, dietary reliance on terrestrial food sources by coastal biota), and the fate and food web accumulation of environmental contaminants.

More soon…but for now, here are a few photos from the field work so far this summer!

Maeve McGovern, Nathalie Carrasco, Emilie Hernes Vereide and Emelie Skogsberg enjoy a sunny day near Gipsvika (Isfjorden, Svalbard). Photo: Sebastian Sikora.

Collecting river water and deploying passive samplers for contaminants.