Hello faithful blog readers. Today was pretty foggy, so we were unable to fly any drones due to condensation on the electronics. However, folks got other projects to work on like analyzing the data we had already collected and working on monitoring the flow of one of the rivers, to assess its potential for hydropower. The fjord is beautiful in the fog, though, and many of us appreciated it by taking hikes, both long and small.

An exciting test pit was dug – over 1 meter of soil was removed from a square meter of land in a known previously habitated site at Skálanes. Óli and Rannveig worked hard to excavate the area, and then we took 13 samples – one for every 10 centimeters. We hope to measure the amount of sheep DNA in each layer – we assume that settlers brought sheep with them, and so sheep DNA should be present in habitated layers and not present in layers that are not habitated. We’re also working to identify the tephra layers (soil horizons which were layed down by volcanic eruptions). It’s not clear out here which layer is which.

Tomorrow is Icelandic Independence Day! We will continue to collect soil samples and drone imagery in the morning, since it is supposed to begin to rain in the afternoon.

Hello! My name is Sydney, and I am a rising senior majoring in chemistry and minoring in math and physics. While in Iceland, I have been doing work with soil analysis and archaeology.
If you are interested, our research in Stöð was recently featured on the Icelandic news starting at 5:23.
The last few days we have been at Skálanes, where we will be for the next week doing scientific research. Skálanes is owned by Óli and Rannveig and is located at the mouth of the Seyðisfjörður fjord. On the property one can find many creatures such as seals, whales, reindeer along with several species of birds including arctic terns, eider ducks, and puffins. Skálanes also has several registered archaeological sites, which is what our program is really interested in studying. The house has a lab for scientists that come stay on the property, and several rooms with beds amongst the home. The property makes money by letting scientists stay on the property, performing tours of the house, and selling eider duck down.

To get to Skálanes we left Seyðisfjörður, where we spent a night, then we drove out of town and crossed three rivers before arriving at the house. The car dropped us off at the first large river and then we hiked 4km to the house with our day pack. Our larger bags were brought to us by a car that crossed the rivers.

 
Our first day we unpacked, met Freyr (a cute chocolate lab that lives on the property), and a group of six student from Glasgow university in Scotland. The computer science group did work on ODM (Optical Drone Map) and prepared the drones for the trip tomorrow. They hope to make some images of the area that will give the soil group a promising area to collect data.
I built shelves for the wet lab in the house for Óli with Kathryn and Kaela.

There was a lot of down time our first day, and we got to enjoy the peaceful atmosphere and learn from the other students living here. There is a possibility to camp if we want, so I hope to be able to do that.
Our second day, it was unfortunately was too foggy and wet for the drones to fly, but it gave the computer scientists more of a down day than they’ve been having and they were able to focus on coding more of the programs we have been using. The soil group did research on how to distinguish between the tephra layers in the soil. Tephra layers are formed volcanic ash, and we can link them to certain eruptions, and hense have a dating tool.
The soil group then joined Rannveig after lunch to start preparing the site where we will be excavating soil from one of the 96 (I think that’s the right number). Rannveig was really excited since it was the first time she had applied for permission to excavate a site of her own. Freyr hadn’t seen her in two weeks and followed us so he could be with her. To prepare the site, we used a GPS to mark the area we were excavating and Rannveig chose a square meter she thought looked promising. We pulled the grass off of the top and then started excavating by gently scraping at the soil layers with a trowel and putting the dirt created in a bucket to dump nearby. We had to be careful that we weren’t disturbing any potential artifacts. We found charcoal, so there was definitely human activity in the square chosen, and Rannveig thinks it could be a midden heap, so I’m excited to see what we keep finding.

When we got back to the house, Kaela and I made banana bread with the bananas that are way past ripe. It was ready in time for dinner and turned out better than I was expecting considering we multiplied the recipe by 10.

A lot had to be done today, but when did that ever bother anyone getting their stomachs full and tastebuds stimulated?

After an early rise, a group of us headed out to the field at 8 AM to capture imagery from the drone, while the others stayed back at the schoolhouse to finish testing the soil samples collected earlier at the Sólheimajökull glacier. Being part of the group on the field, I was flying the drones through the flight paths we had previously made to capture two different types of imagery, Visual Lens Imagery (VLI) and Near Infra-Red (NIR), of the sites of interest. We planned to use the imagery captured from the drone flights to analyze the sites further, which would give us information regarding earlier settlement on the sites; for instance, the NIR imagery allows the camera of the drone to visualize the land in terms of colors that the average human eye cannot detect and thus, it proves to be useful for detecting differences in vegetation of the land.

Following the morning session of flying, we headed back to get some lunch and were already expecting a great meal based on what we were served yesterday, but our expectations were again exceeded with amazing food: beef meatballs with cheese, white rice, salad, creamy cheese sauce (I don’t know the name but it’s really good, I swear!). Given the satisfaction earned from this meal, we were determined to finish all the remaining work we had, so we headed back onto the field and stayed till 5:30 PM, with some delays experienced due to technical difficulties with one of the drones.

Further proof of hospitality we received from Stodvarfjordur: Brekken offered to serve us dinner when they learnt that we will not be around for lunch tomorrow! And guess what? We stuffed ourselves again with the delectable pizza we were served. To finish off the day, our beloved faculty leaders E & C gave a brief presentation in the schoolhouse about the whole project, with the main audience being the local crowd.

Hello dear readers! We awoke to another day of beautiful weather and warm sunshine, which was enjoyed by the small herd of napping horses along the river. Charlie and I can’t figure out what we’ve done right to have 9 straight days of sun but the students are starting to doubt they need all that rain gear we emphasized so strongly …

Today we drove from Kirkjubæjuarklauster to Stöðvarfjördur with many stops in between. This drive took us from the south coast of Iceland to about half way up the east coast. Our first destination was to another glacier coming from the Vatnajökull ice cap (the largest in Europe) called Kviárjökull. We are scouting this glacier to see if it’s a good candidate for additional sampling in the future, so we can compare data from Sólheimajökull with another Icelandic glacier.

Our second stop is the lovely “Glacier Lagoon,” or Jökulsárion, where the Norðlingalægðarjökull glacier calves into the sea. This is the only glacier that calves directly into the sea in all of Iceland. We saw seals swimming in the lagoon along with eider ducks, gulls, Arctic terns and a few foolish/brave humans in kayaks!

After driving past 3 other outlet glaciers, we took a brief detour to the fishing town Höfn, where we were treated to a fabulous view of Vatnajökull and its outlet glaciers.

The day was getting more cloudy (finally!) as we drove another stretch of Route 1 to the small village of Djúpivogur for a bathroom break and important re-caffination. Yours truly also acquired a traditional Icelandic doughnut. Yum! The town is quite old and has a number of buildings dating from the late 1800s and early 1900s. They are also, apparently, quite proud of their toilets.

After journeying along a few more fjords and twisty roads, passing a number of camping vans along the way, we arrived at our destination – a schoolhouse in the small village of Stöðvarfjördur, a 5 minute drive away from the archaeological site we’ll be working at Monday and Tuesday. This site is significant for a number of reasons, which you can read about here and here. Tomorrow we will work with the drones, flying over the site and gathering information such as Near Infrared, which can point us to locations that were previously populated by humans. On Tuesday we’ll use that information to collect soil samples and test differences between microbial populations in soils that have been previously inhabited versus those that have not. But perhaps most importantly, the school has a washing machine, which has allowed us to finally get some clean clothes.

Good thing tomorrow is a holiday and school is not in session!

Wish us luck on all our work in the next few days. Signing off, your friendly neighborhood molecular biologist!

Its Lillian again with our second and final day at Sólheimajökull! Today we took soil samples around the glacier.

After having a great breakfast of egg fried rice using the dinner leftovers, we headed again from Vik to Sólheimajökull. Then we split up into three teams to take soil samples. We use the samples to measure microbial DNA. This can show us how the environment has changed after the glacier has receded. C and E had a map they created of sample sites that covered a wide range of years that the glacier receded from each spot. Then they split the spots up into three sets based on location.

Charlie, along with Sydney, Porter, and Jordan volunteered to take the most demanding set of samples, which required more strenuous hiking, including crossing rivers! The remaining two groups were led by Roger, who was the student leader of the day, and Em.

All the groups were able to make it to most of the sample sites. However, we are sad to say that we lost one of our drones, Carmen, during the sampling. Carmen encountered errors while flying, and we were unable to control it. We used the last image it captured to try and find it to no avail. Later, I found more data of the flight on the app we use to fly the Spark drones, and it is most likely that Carmen flew into the lake by Sólheimajökull. We are hoping to find funds to replace Carmen soon.

After we came back to Vik, we had a great dinner of chili made by Kaela! Then we packed up our things as we prepared for driving to Klauster the next day.

Hello! My name is Lillian and I’m a senior Computer Science major. Today we hiked the glacier Sólheimajökull! Sólheimajökull is an outlet glacier of the glacier Mýrdalsjökull, meaning that it originates from Mýrdalsjökull through a valley. Sólheimajökull is also interesting in that it is covered in lots of ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010.

We woke up in Vik to the sound of roosters. For a few people in the group, this was a nice reminder of home! Then we piled into the vans for the half-hour drive to the glacier.

Gummi and Oddur lead us on our hike on Sólheimajökull. They both work in Reykjavík and have lead the IFS group on Sólheimajökull for multiple years. We divided into two groups, one with Gummi and Em and one with Oddur and Charlie. Then we split up with one group walking along the northwest side and one group walking the southeast side of the glacier. Before walking on the glacier, we had to put crampons on our boots in order to hike the glacier with more traction.

After the two groups met on the top of the glacier, we ate lunch and did some drone flying!

After lunch, each group climbed down the glacier opposite the way we came.

After thanking and saying goodbye to Gummi and Oddur, we left to travel back to Vik. On the way, we stopped by Reynisfjara Beach, famous for its basalt columns, and for being the site of multiple films and movies, including Rogue One and Game of Thrones!

After arriving back in Vik, we had an amazing Chinese dinner cooked by Li with the help of Joyce, Roger, and Mubi! Then we prepared to take soil samples around Sólheimajökull the next day.

The first thing we did after waking up was hiking up the 2nd mountain. For me, it was Helgafell, which is older compared to Eldfell, and is located towards the southeast part of the island of Heimaey. While hiking, we continued monitoring the altitude we were measuring yesterday with elevation platforms.

We returned to the hostel to feed ourselves lunch and to pack up for our ferry back to the mainland. Then we all got into our vans and drove towards Vik, a town close to the southern coast of Iceland, where we planned to stay for the next 3 nights. To finish off, E made some delicious veggie soup with bread and salad that had to be devoured.

Tuesday, June 4, 2019         No rain = beautiful weather, again

For the morning, the group of students walked to the Eldheimar museum and learned about the volcano eruption in Heimaey in 1973. It is a very cool museum where we walked around with audio guides that sense our location and play the corresponding audio. It is built around an excavation site after the eruption. We were able to see the ruin of a house, the model of the path of the lava flow which almost closed the port of the island, learn about what people were doing during the time and a newly created island by lava, Surtsey.

In the afternoon, we split up into two groups. One group hiked the Helgafell and the other hiked Eldfell. I hiked Helgafell. It was really fun with loose rocks and steep slopes. Despite being forecasted to be around 0 Celsius and windy, it was so warm and we had to shed layers during our hike. Our little science exercise for the hikes was to measure the pressure at sea level and at the top of each mountain that we hiked, and compare the margin of errors between devices and with the elevation marked (the accurate standard). Tomorrow, we will hike the other mountain and do the same thing.

A group photo with the puffin before we split.

The Eldfell group.

The view from Helgafell. If we look towards Eldfell, we can distinguish the new land that was created by the lava.

Cat of the Day! We met this cute little cat on our way back from Helgafell.

After dinner at Gott (a very nice restaurant), we (people shown in the picture above) biked to the south side of the island to see puffins. It was a rough bike ride! But it was worth it. Sheep and horses also became our friends for the ride.

Since we were on the south of the island, we hypothesized this was Surtsey.