Zackenberg research station
Coordinates: 74 ° 28 ′ N , 20 ° 34 ′ W
The Zackenberg Research Station is a scientific facility for researching and monitoring the Arctic ecosystem in the Northeast Greenland National Park . It belongs to the Government of Greenland and is run by the Institute for Life Sciences at Aarhus University .
location
The station is located in Zackenbergdalen in the southern part of the Northeast Greenland National Park about 1300 meters from the coast of Zackenberg Bay, which is part of the Young Sund fjord system . The next inhabited place is the headquarters of the Sirius patrol in Daneborg , 21 km south-southeast - also on Young Sund - where the Zackenberg station maintains a marine research laboratory. The nearest civil settlement is Ittoqqortoormiit, 450 km south .
history
The 1338 m high Zackenberg was named by Carl Koldewey's Second German North Polar Expedition (1869–1870). Later the name was transferred to the valley to the east ( Zackenbergdalen ), the river there ( Zackenbergelv ) and the sea bay ( Zackenberg Bugt ). There has been a fishing station at Zackenberg Bay since 1945, which was manned until 1953 and again in the winter of 1959/60 and is still used regularly by the Sirius patrol as accommodation today. In 1991 a scientific expedition worked for the first time in the Zackenberg Valley as part of the Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations (ZERO) research program . A temporary station was set up here in 1995 and the Zackenberg research station officially opened two years later. It was initially only occupied in the summer months of June, July and August, but the season has now been extended to the period from May 1 to October 31.
description
The Zackenberg station has a covered area of 650 m², the branch in Daneborg another 290 m². The scientific laboratories occupy 40 m² (Daneborg: 50 m²). There are 15 living rooms with 24 beds, five laboratories, a lounge and a canteen. There are also 10 beds in Daneborg. The station is only manned in summer. Then four people work here, and one to three people in Daneborg.
Zackenberg has a 380 m long and 20 m wide gravel runway and a helicopter landing pad . The station is approached about 20 times a year and a supply ship arrives once a year in August.
climate
The climate at the Zackenberg Bay is high arctic. The mean annual temperature at the station is −9.2 ° C. February, the coldest month, has an average temperature of −19.4 ° C, and July, the warmest month, has an average temperature of 6.1 ° C. The mean wind speed at a height of two meters is 2.8 m / s. The annual amount of precipitation is 200 mm.
research
A long-term research and monitoring program is being carried out in the station under the name Zackenberg Basic . This is part of the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM), which also includes the Arctic Station of the University of Copenhagen on Disko Island and the Greenland Institute for Natural Resources (Pinngortitaleriffik) in Nuuk .
Zackenberg Basic consists of five sub-programs:
- ClimateBasis ( monitoring of the climate),
- GeoBasis (monitoring of the carbon balance of the ecosystem, other consequences of climate change ),
- BioBasis (monitoring of living nature),
- MarineBasis (monitoring of physical and biological processes in the marine ecosystem),
- GlacioBasis (monitoring of the mass balance of the local glaciers ).
Around two thirds of the approximately 25 projects that run annually deal with climate change .
See also
Web links
- Zackenberg Research Station on the homepage of the INTERACT project
- Homepage of the research program Zackenberg Ecological Research Operations (ZERO)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Zackenberg . In: Anthony K. Higgins: Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland. (= Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 21, 2010). Copenhagen 2010, ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9 , accessed September 15, 2015 (English)