You never really leave a place or person you love. Part of them you take with you, leaving a part of yourself behind.
We left Ny Alesund today and have returned to Longyearbyen. We will take Ny Alesund with us and leave a part of ourselves behind.
The view of "our" glacier from above in the plane after three weeks of study added to our picture of its dynamics. We have discussed its subglacial streams, how they bring sediment to the fjord and rise buoyantly to create sediment plumes. A curiosity has been the sudden activity of a plume on the northern end and the quiet, but older plume in the middle. For most of our study, we were restricted to the southern end of the glacier- the rest was just too ice chocked. But the last few days the northern opened up to reveal a strong subglacial current with an excess of sediment attracting large flocks of birds. We shifted our research to the north end during the last days and gathered as much data as possible. . What caused this sudden activity? We don't know. These questions we will hash out during post expedition analysis. But what we have learned is that glaciers change. Daily. Every day that we were out there it was a new and different place. We may not ever know what exact changes caused particular shifts to the "plumbing" but recognize that glaciers are dynamic systems. Its the rate of change that we need to pay particular attention to.
You can clearly see the north and central sediment plumes in this picture.
We spent much of our time taking measurements in this sediment plume on the southern end.
Down the glacier. This is a view we didn't see until today.
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