Hi Svalbard Team! I am happily following along with Missy’s excellent journal and it seems that you are all doing great work! Keep it up – the world is enthralled!

I am interested in the drop in Kongress lake level Missy mentioned. What do you think has caused this? Could it be that the limestone bedrock below the lake has collapsed and allowed water to trickle through? Is Lake Linne lower too? Are the neighboring Russian settlement taking water from the lake? Keep us posted as your research develops.

I noticed from the first half of Missy’s introductions that REU student Emily is from U of Arizona. Well, I am of course interested in getting her to my classroom here in Prescott, AZ! She also could start an email correspondence with me and my students about her experiences in science – our school starts next week 8/4 and we would love to have a field connection right away. Fun! Also, Kristen’s work correlating weather data to ablation seems perfect for my students. Lets work on a link there, since I would love to receive data, graphs and hypothesis from her as well.

What news of the polar bear? I’ll be watching! -Maggie Kane

Al

The lowering of Kongress Lake is really curious! The lake is thought to be a big sinkhole so it should be connected to a subsurface cave system and the lake level should be a function of water running into the lake and water draining out of the lake. The really interesting question is what could have happened to this cave system to cause the water to suddenly drain out of the lake and then allow the drainage to stop? Not only has the drainage stopped, but now the lake level is rising -probably due to increased snowmelt.We have lake level sensors in both lakes, a conductivity sensor in Linne, and we have daily pictures taken by an automated camera that suggests that water drained from Kongress to Linne. The pictures show that within two days after Kongress started dropping water flooded the Linne lake ice causing the lake level to rise by about 50cm.
All this is even more curious because we are in the zone of continuous permafrost so the ground, in theory, should be frozen sollid. Seems the more we learn about this amazing place the more it intrigues us!
Be well,
 
Al