CRYPTOSOIL project came to the end. At least the most exciting and awaited part – fieldwork. We reached our home destinations. It was a hard drive across Sweden. Ca. 2 000 km from the Nikkaluokta to the ferry (Ystad-Świnoujscie) and 600 km back to Kraków. Let’s take a look on some numbers: Amount of days: […]

Wooow…. It is the first thing we have to say about last days. It is really difficult to decide what we should present first… so maybe in chronological order. After good lunch we packed our backpacks for 4 day adventure in the other valley. We had to walk for only 11 km but it took […]

Isfallsglaciären is the second glacier in Tarfala Valley. It has its name due to a huge fragments of glacier forehead ice falling down from steppy wall of rocks to the foreland. Each day of staying in Research Station we could see Isfallsglaciären from our windows – with its great size and its majesty. After finishing […]

Our team is really happy to inform you that we are on our heading! Drone is buzzing, spade is digging, pens are writing, reindeers are grazing, researchers are happy! After four days of intense work we almost finished our fieldwork in the foreland of Storglaciären. And we are working like Elite-Pro specialists. Catching spade in […]

Driving, sailing, flying, hiking – getting here is not an easy thing. By car, across the sea, and finally by helicopter… at 18thof July we arrived at Tarfala Research Station. As a true researcher we decided to choose maybe not the easiest but the most inspiring path… During ca. 2 700 km we had a […]

SUCCESS LEVEL: > 100 % NUMBER OF COLLECTED SAMPLES: > 450 NUMBER OF INVESTIGATED PLOTS: 175 NUMBER OF INJURIES: 0 NUMBER OF ENCOUNTERED POLAR BEARS: 0 ENCOUNTERED PROBLEMS: Weather! 😦 ENCOUNTERED REAL PROBLEMS: 0 SATISFACTION LEVEL: HIGH! 🙂 Looking for cryptogam species. I’m back to reality and civilisation now. It’s hard to forget emptiness of […]

First week of fieldwork ended. We have finished it with pretty good result 🙂 However the weather was not on our side. After two sunny days which we spent on things related to accommodation, safety course and research area reconnaissance, rain began to fall. We had to wait until the weather gets better. In order […]

Monday afternoon we reached our study location. Below you can find short video about the first day in Ny-Ålesund – the world’s northernmost civilian settlement where many different countries has permanent research stations. We were very warmly welcomed. Our special thanks go to Wojtek Moskal (Norwegian Polar Institute) who helped us with all logistical and […]

PROJECT TITLE: The Importance Of Cryptogams In The Primary Succession Process On Glacier Forelands In Svalbard (acronym: CRYPTOGAM) TEAM: Paulina Wietrzyk – project leader.  Incredibly inquisitive. Polar enthusiast. 3rd Arctic Mission.  PhD candidate at the Prof. Z. Czeppe Department of Polar Research and Documentation at Jagiellonian University in Cracow (Poland); BSc in Biology and Geography […]