“Erik Born told me to be sure to look up every couple of minutes and check for polar bears. The last documented fatal attack of a polar bear in Greenland was an artist in the 1920s. I didn’t want to be next”—Maria Coryell-Martin

Snapshots of the Sand Island team. All images by Maria Coryell-Martin.

She did it! Our favorite expeditionary artist, Maria Coryell-Martin, spent three weeks last summer working with Danish scientist Erik Born (Greenland Institute of Natural Sciences) and colleagues on Sand Island, a tiny island off the remote east coast of Greenland in Northeast Greenland National Park (the world’s largest National Park) tagging and collecting genetic samples from the summer walrus population.

Coryell-Martin raised the nearly $8000 that enabled her to join the field party through tax-deductible donations made through the Allied Arts Foundation, a Seattle nonprofit that supports local artists and artist organizations. Sponsorship supported the first phase, the field phase, of Coryell-Martin’s project, High Latitudes: Science and Art in the Arctic. Her goals included documenting as much science as possible, gathering plenty of material for studio paintings, and having fun—all three of which she easily accomplished.

Coryell-Martin first travelled to Greenland in 2005 as part of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship which allowed her to spend a year traveling to and painting in remote areas following her graduation from Carleton College. (The National Science Foundation supported her with a trip to Greenland’s Summit Station, which she documented via sketches, notes and paintings available on her website; she also wrote a story for us that you can read if you click here.)

Since then, she has traveled to Antarctica twice and has painted glaciers in the Northern Cascades. Through her art, Coryell-Martin brings awareness of climate change to the public through exhibitions at a number of national galleries and museums as well as community education events in her hometown, Seattle.

Coryell-Martin packed light to avoid baggage fees.

For last summer’s trip, the team met in Copenhagen, then traveled together to Daneborg Station (74°N), a jumping-off point for field research, historical trapper hut preservation efforts by the North East Greenland Company, and headquarters of Greenland’s SIRIUS Sledge Patrol, a faction of the Royal Danish Navy that patrols northeast Greenland by six dogsled teams. At Daneborg, Coryell-Martin and colleagues spent a couple of days organizing the last of their supplies and field gear before the fifteen-minute boat ride to Sand Island.

On Sand Island, a dynamic 200m x 500m pile of sand—the subaerial part of a terminal moraine at the mouth of Young Sound fiord—the group set up camp, five personal tents and one kitchen tent, and got to work.

Aerial view of Sand Island looking east down Young Sound.

“I knew it was going to be a small island, but when I saw it from the plane…,” Coryell-Martin says, “I really respected him [Born] for taking someone sight unseen for three weeks in the field!”

During the summer months, male walruses (who separate from females and calves in summer) feed on Young Sound clams. The walruses spend a couple of days at sea filling up. Sand Island beaches provide a convenient haul-out adjacent the summer feeding grounds where the animals can rest and molt. Sometimes there would be no walruses at all for a couple of days and then, suddenly, a group could grow to more than 35 walruses all sleeping on the beach. Different groups cycled though during the three weeks the team was in the field. The island is also a predator-free sanctuary for Arctic Tern, Sabine’s Gull, and Eider Duck colonies.

The science party’s main objectives were to tag every walrus that hauled out on the beach and to collect samples from the entire population for genetic information, building on a database started in 2002.

“They wanted to take skin biopsies from every walrus. Apparently, walruses don’t like vertical figures which meant that they had to be approached first by crawling on hands and knees and then by belly-scoot. All this while carrying a cross-bow to take skin biopsies. The cross-bow arrows had small cylinders at their tip that took small cores of walrus skin when fired. After shooting, the arrows could be retrieved with a fishing reel attachment,” explains Coryell-Martin.

Sand Island treasure map inspired by those of yore.

Coryell-Martin spent her time observing and helping out the team where she could.

“This was a great project to be an artist on. There was lots to do, but it was a small area. And the scientists were really respectful of what I was there to do—paint,” she says.

During her two weeks in the field, Coryell-Martin created more than 100 field sketches. The images not only record the life and science of the team, but are also studies of the colors, wildlife, and icebergs particular to the Greenland coast. These sketches will become the basis for larger watercolors painted in Coryell-Martin’s studio. Her largest piece, now 5 separate 10” x 30” sketches, will be compiled into a 360° panorama which she composed from the middle of the island. This she plans on making into a large installation piece—something akin to a giant lampshade into which people can step and be completely immersed in the world of Sand Island.

Coryell-Martin also experimented with sound recordings using an Olympus LS-10 Linear PCM, a handheld digital recorder about the size of a cell phone. She used it as a nightly audio journal, and also recorded interviews, and natural sounds that she plans to use as a compliment to her artwork.

Listen to Sand Island’s Arctic Terns:

terns

Coryell-Martin's field painting of Sand Island's Arctic Terns.

“I want to create large atmospheric studio paintings that illustrate elements of the polar environment that are vulnerable to climate change, contrasting the stark, rugged landscape with smaller details of life: marine mammals, birds, and even the tiniest of wild flowers.”

Coryell-Martin and husband Darin Reid, an independent web developer, are currently settling in to a new house in Seattle after a year in rural Twisp, Washington. Her polar paintings will be featured in upcoming shows at the Washington State Convention Center and she is also the Featured Artist on Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website. Her next painting expedition will be to the Grand Canyon this February. For more information, on upcoming exhibitions and expeditions, visit expeditionaryart.com.—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Nov 19 2010

“Birds, and raptors in particular, have long served as indicators of environmental change.  With our research in Greenland, we aim to both increase our knowledge and understanding of species breeding in the High Arctic as well as looking at the possible effects climate change is having on bird populations.  We hope that our results will provide scientists and lawmakers additional data to create better environmental policies in the future.” –Kurt Burnham, President and CEO, High Arctic Institute

The team takes genetic samples from an eider duck. Photo: Jennifer Burnham

When Kurt Burnham’s mother was in labor, his father was on the phone telling an assistant how to gently help a Peregrine Falcon chick from its egg. Two weeks later, the two wee ones shared one of their first baby pictures, taken from baby Burnham’s crib–a propitious moment, perhaps, for the now-ornithologist, raptor conservationist, and President and CEO of the High Arctic Institute (HAI).

A Family Affair

Burnham founded the HAI, a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and conservation of birds in Greenland, in 2007.

The HAI continues Peregrine Falcon and Gyrfalcon research started in the early 1970’s by the Greenland Peregrine Falcon Survey. This research began in response to declining Peregrine populations across the globe as a result of the pesticide DDT. In 1974 research efforts transferred to The Peregrine Fund, the organization over which Burnham’s father presided for twenty years.

Conserving Greenlands Raptor’s

Burnham first visited Greenland with his father as a field assistant in 1991 when he was just fifteen years old. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree in biology in 1997, he began managing The Peregrine Fund’s Greenland Project and became their Director of Arctic Projects in 2003.

A young gyrfalcon from Cape Parry. Photo courtesy Kurt Burnham

Following his father’s death in 2006, The Peregrine Fund decided against continuing arctic research efforts.  Instead, the organization handed over its small boat and field gear to Burnham, who had recently graduated with a DPhil from Oxford and was keen to absorb the project under his new non-profit, the High Arctic Institute.

The HAI monitors Gyrfalcon and Peregrine Falcon populations breeding in the Thule and Kangerlussuaq areas.  Relatively small birds of prey, falcons have characteristically pointed wings, talons, and tough flesh-ripping beaks, all good for hunting multitudes of other smaller, tasty little birds.

Gyrfalcons, the world’s largest falcon, live across the Northern Hemisphere, but breed only in the Arctic. Peregrine Falcons live in a variety of habitats between the arctic and tropics and are the fastest animals on the planet with vertical hunting dives clocked at more than 200 miles an hour. Rather than building their own nests, falcons tend to take over abandoned nests (especially of Golden Eagles and Ravens) or scrape shallow depressions into rocks on cliff ledges where they lay their eggs.  Both species are also very sensitive to environmental changes and are good bio-indicators.

Devoted Staff

Burnham relies on a small, close-knit field team including wildlife biologists Dr. Jeff Johnson (University of North Texas) and Bridger Konkel, and Burnham’s wife, Dr. Jennifer Horwath Burnham (whom he met in Thule), an assistant professor of geography at Augustana College in western Illinois. This summer marked Burnham’s twentieth consecutive Greenland field season.

Burnham (in red) and his team take samples from captured birds. Photo: Jeff Johnson

Adventurous Fieldwork

Each year in the Thule area, the group visits a number of offshore islands using an open 25-foot boat, often working 24-36 hours at a time to maximize the rare windows of good weather and perpetual summer sunlight. They survey steep, rocky cliffs from the water looking for protected nesting sites on grassy ledges, which they log into a handheld GPS. Next, one or two people repel down the steep cliff face to the nest where, gloveless, they band young while collecting egg shell fragments (pollutant monitoring), blood samples (pollutants and genetics), prey remains (diet), and molted feathers from the adults (genetics).

Focused Research

Each summer includes a project particular to the year. Last summer, Burnham’s team spent a month examining the Common Eider population. In other years, they’ve tested for avian influenza for the United States Geological Survey. In 2005, satellite telemetry units helped the HAI track birds in three areas of Greenland. For several years they cored Gyrfalcon nesting sites in Kangerlussuaq and Thule with guano a meter thick for carbon dating, and found one site in Kangerlussuaq that has been occupied for over 2500 years!

Consistency and Longevity

By returning to nesting sites year after year, Burnham’s team keeps tabs on how Gyrfalcon and Peregrine populations are changing with a warming global climate. As temperatures warm, species of birds that never lived in the Arctic are likely to be moving in. The result will likely be more competition for nesting sites and food since both Gyrfalcons and Peregrines fill a similar ecological niche. It’s too soon to say what the long-term effects of this ecological contest will be, but Burnham’s team will be watching.

Support The High Arctic Institute

The High Arctic Institute is supported by tax-deductable donations. For more information or to make a contribution, contact Kurt Burnham (kburnham@higharctic.org 309-526-3355).—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Oct 11 2010

A statue of Hans Egede keeps watch over Nuuk, Greenland's capital. The Scandanavian missionary brought modern colonization to Greenland in the 1720s--for good and ill (literally). Photo: Jason Buenning

As the U.S. summer research support program in Greenland came to an end last week, agency representatives assembled in Greenland’s picturesque capital of Nuuk for two days of meetings. The goal: to further coordinate U.S. research activities on the island, especially focused on changes resulting from Greenland’s increased self-governance effective in June of 2009 (an island in the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland has gained increasing autonomy since voting for self-rule in 1979).

Leaders from several Greenlandic agencies met with program managers from the National Science Foundation’s arctic division, officers from the New York Air National Guard’s 109^th Airlift Wing, and CH2M HILL Polar Services staff to discuss Greenland’s permitting policies, safety, field travel, and environmental regulations.

From left: Aviaja Marsilie Neumann Andersen, Dept. of Spatial Planning; Naja Holm, Section of Nature; Thomas Nielsen, Section of Nature; Brad Stefano, CPS safety; Maj. Paul Bernasconi, ANG; Mike McKibben, CPS head; Talea Weissang, Section of Nature; Sandy Starkweather, CPS Greenland management (outgoing); Stan Wisneski, CPS Greenland management (incoming); Elmer Topp-Jørgensen, Section of Nature - Special Advisor; Jason Buenning, CPS Greenland science planning. Photo: Brad Stefano

Though it’s home to only about 15,000 people, Nuuk is a thriving metropolis compared to other Greenland communities, more than doubling the population of the next-largest community.  “Nuuk is pretty crazy compared to anywhere else I’ve been in Greenland,” Jason Buenning wrote.  “Kanger it ain’t.  Even Ilulissat doesn’t really compare when it comes to amount of traffic and larger buildings…!   All the food we had was quite good, ($90USD dinner anyone?) and generally we drank beer that was brewed there in town (besides the random Carlsberg or Tuborg) and it was tasty and expensive.”

Jason Buenning captured this photo of fog burning off Stor Melina, the only time the sun appeared during the trip. "Within an hour, though, we were socked in again."

The quick trip afforded little time for sight-seeing, but Jason was able to squeeze in a quick peek at Santa's mailbox, located next to the hotel. Postmarks from 1996 are clearly visible in the window. Photo: Brad Stefano

–Kip Rithner

Comments (0) Sep 02 2010

Note: We were doing a little housekeeping and came on this update on the Arctic Circle Traverse written back in June. It holds up as a nice view into what it takes researchers to “collect data,” so here you go. We hope to hear more from Box when he returns from Greenland after retrieving data from his time-lapse cameras observing the Petermann Glacier.

Even the best planned plans can go awry. So it went in April and May, when a series of mishaps beyond their control kept the five-person team led by Jason Box from heading out to the field for their Arctic Circle Traverse (ACT), a National Science Foundation-supported study of snow accumulation on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

While awaiting a break in conditions, the team assembled their gear in Kangerlussuaq. All photos courtesy of Jason Box

Snow storms, the eruption of the  Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland,which prevented airplane flying, and aircraft problems grounded the crew and originally dashed their hopes of getting out on the ice.

“Our biggest challenge was getting into the field,” says Box. “We learned that the traverse, while labor-intensive, is more likely to succeed than depending on flights, especially in east Greenland.”

Just when things were looking their grimmest, the team got a window of clear weather and set out for 13 days.

Home away from home: camping on the ice sheet.

Sleeping under “turbulent” Aurora Borealis at night and blazing trails during the day, they successfully traversed roughly 700 kilometers. Over the journey, the team gathered the necessary information to map snowfall rates across the ice sheet, Box said.

Posse, Greenland style. Getting ready to ride.

They measured snow depth using radar, and took ice cores as well. Isotopes in the cores allow scientists to identify annual snow accumulation; radar and coring used in conjunction provide more specificity than either technique would alone.

As they traversed, a NASA P-3 airplane flew over their line and collected radar data that measured the layering structure of the snow, providing “virtual ice cores.”

Every successful coring operation warrants a celebratory drink. Jason Box prepares to open the bottle.

“It’s nice to have the P-3 data, as it will cover a much larger area,” says Box. However, the airborne radar doesn’t replace actual ice cores, he says.

“So far there is no way to efficiently remotely sense the vertical profiles of density,” says Box. “Cores remain necessary in-situ observational data.”

The research aims to provide an accurate analysis of snowfall on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Box and his collaborators, Rick Forster (PI on a related NSF grant that seeks to fill holes in the snow accumulation data), Evan Burgess, and Clément Miège (University of Utah) are measuring annual snow fall to better understand how much of the ice sheet volume change and, in turn global sea level, is due to changes in snowfall or due to changing melt rates.

“We know that melt rates have increased in recent years,” the group writes on their blog. “Yet, we also know that as climate warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture and consequently, more snow is delivered to the ice sheets. Our project will help better understand the effect on the mass budget of changing mass input from snow accumulation variations in the past 30-60 years. We’re like auditors, with really thick parkas on.”

Those parkas kept the crew warm as they worked and camped in temperatures as low as -35 C (-31 F) at night and up to -5 (23 F) to – 25 C (-13F) during the day.

Now that they’re home, they’ve hung the parkas in the closet and begun the long task of analyzing the data, says Box.

“The core just made it off the ice sheet, and it needs to be put into the core melter to get the isotope and other chemistry data,” he says. “A graduate student, Clement Miege, will spend much of the summer identifying layers in the ground radar data.”

The team will present preliminary results at the AGU meeting in San Francisco this December.  —Rachel Walker

Comments (0) Aug 27 2010

Modeling climate’s complexity: This image, taken from a larger simulation of 20th century climate, depicts several aspects of Earth’s climate system. Sea surface temperatures and sea ice concentrations are shown by the two color scales. The figure also captures sea level pressure and low-level winds, including warmer air moving north on the eastern side of low-pressure regions and colder air moving south on the western side of the lows. Such simulations, produced by the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, can also depict additional features of the climate system, such as precipitation. Companion software, recently released as the Community Earth System Model, will enable scientists to study the climate system in even greater complexity. Image courtesy UCAR

The latest version of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Earth System Model (CESM) includes for the first time ever the capability to project how climate change will affect the ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland. The model, released August 17, will be one of the primary climate models used for the next assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It replaces a version of the same model released in 2004.

Specifically, the new model’s advanced capabilities will help scientists better understand some of the critical mysteries of global climate change, including:

• What impact will warming temperatures have on the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica?

• How will patterns in the ocean and atmosphere affect regional climate in coming decades?

• How will climate change influence the severity and frequency of tropical cyclones, including hurricanes?

• What are the effects of tiny airborne particles, known as aerosols, on clouds and temperatures?

Available On The Web

The CESM is one of about a dozen climate models worldwide that can be used to simulate the many components of Earth’s climate system, including the oceans, atmosphere, sea ice, and land cover. The CESM and its predecessors are unique among these models; a broad community of scientists developed them. The model is free to researchers worldwide and can be downloaded here.

“With the Community Earth System Model, we can pursue scientific questions that we could not address previously,” says NCAR scientist James Hurrell, chair of the scientific steering committee that developed the model. “Thanks to its improved physics and expanded biogeochemistry, it gives us a better representation of the real world.”

How Models Work

Climate models, like weather models, rely on a three-dimensional mesh that reaches high into the atmosphere and into the oceans. At regularly spaced intervals, or grid points, the models use laws of physics to compute atmospheric and environmental variables, simulating the exchanges among gases, particles, and energy across the atmosphere.

Because climate models cover far longer periods than weather models, they cannot include as much detail. Thus, climate projections appear on regional to global scales rather than local scales. This approach enables researchers to simulate global climate over years, decades, or millennia. To verify a model’s accuracy, scientists typically simulate past conditions and then compare the model results to actual observations.

Improved Forecasts

Using the CESM, Hurrell and other scientists hope to learn more about ocean-atmosphere patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which affect sea surface temperatures as well as atmospheric conditions. Such knowledge, Hurrell says, can eventually lead to forecasts spanning several years of potential weather impacts, such as a particular region facing a high probability of drought, or another region likely facing several years of cold and wet conditions.  —Rachel Walker

Comments (0) Aug 25 2010