After long preparations, the helicopter expedition is finally starting for real.

The Nunataryuk/WP4 Coastal Waters team started their second expedition in the Mackenzie delta on 17 June 2019.

This week we finished our field campaign, prepared our departure from Herschel Island and flew back to Inuvik.

For the second half of our expedition, the composition of our team has changed somewhat. Andreas Richter and Louis-Philippe Roy left on April 25, and Hugues Lantuit came in instead.

Last week everything went according to our meticulously prepared plan. This week the reality of doing field work in remote places of the Arctic gripped us.

The Takuvik-AWI team successfully completed the first WP4 expedition. A fortunate stroke of serendipity? Undeniably.

The countdown before the ultimate lift off has begun. Six team mates. Five airplane take-offs and landings. Four pieces of luggage each.

Up here in the North, the spring field season has started and we are busy preparing the Nunataryuk Expedition Yukon Coast 2019 Spring.

After a rushed session of box filling, stacking, identifying, enumerating and wrapping, the scientific gear is finally on the move.

Nunataryuk field visit to Ilulissat and Qeqertarsuaq in Greenland to host local consultations and interviews.

In February 2019, members of the Nunataryuk WP4 “Coastal Waters” team conduct a tour of the Northwest Territories communities.

The first scoping trip to Russia was held between June and July 2018 to the city of Yakutsk which is the capital of the Sakha Republic or “Yakutia”.

Ice safety training is a necessaty before going to the field.

our taks is to conduct high resolution mapping to provide a snapshot of the present state of the coast and to assess on the rates of coastal change, especially after 2015.

One of the key aims of this year’s expedition was sampling and ground-truthing the soils and streams of the coastal tundra plain that run through the landscape.

A couple of weeks ago the rebirth of our research vessel “Christine” allowed us to sail in the Herschel Basin (50-60 m water depth), southeast of the Island, to test the seismic imagery system.

Losing track of time and space, we only just realized that it has already been one week on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island).

Quvianaqtusi qaigapsi, Wilkommen, Welkom, Bienvenue, Välkommen, Bem vinda, Welcome to the 2018 Nunataryuk field campaign blog of the Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) and the Yukon Coast Expedition!