Fieldwork

I undertook a 3 month sampling campaign at the Athabasca Glacier, an alpine glacier in Alberta, Canada August through October, 2014. I collected meltwater at the end of the summer to see how its chemistry changed with the advent of colder temperatures, then used those changes to interpret possible driving changes in the subglacial environment.

I learned how to conduct a multi-month field season in an area removed from easy access to assistance and supplies, relying instead on planning, ingenuity, and creative problem solving skills. There were ups (beautiful scenery) and some downs (getting our van stuck in snow daily in October) but overall it was a fantastic experience.

In August and September 2015, I headed to south Greenland in an attempt to compare end-summer chemistry from an outlet glacier from the Greenland Ice Sheet to what I had found the year before at an alpine glacier. Planning for a field season in Canada provided the training wheels for this field season, as everything I wanted to bring had to be shipped with the understanding that if I didn't bring it, it would not be available.

Living in a tent in southern Greenland for two months was a unique experience. The trip to the glacier was termed the "Narsarsuaq triathalon," requiring a bike ride on borrowed bikes, an approximately 2 hour long hike, followed by paddling an inflatable raft upstream to our sampling location.

From end-June through mid-August 2018 I assisted a research group from the University of Florida on their third Greenland deployment. I assisted with a wide variety of field work, ranging from measuring in situ water quality parameters to measuring alkalinity in collected samples in our makeshift lab. Additionally I conducted in-field measurements of my own, looking at Rn-222 concentrations in glacial outflow waters to evaluate subglacial water residence time.

This field campaign was different from my previous two in that I wasn't situated in one location for multiple months, but rather traveled to multiple locations to collect spot samples for comparison with spot samples collected from previous years.