Kinnvika is a project within the International Polar Year 2007–2008 (IPY) initiative that focuses on both Arctic warming and on this fairly unexplored part of the Arctic. The old Kinnvika station in Svalbard is the logistic platform for scientists who will be making six research expeditions in 2007–2009. During 2008, 555 man-days were spent at the Kinnvika station.

Spring operations

During three hectic days in the middle of April, 14 persons and several tons of goods were flown from Longyearbyen with Airlift helicopters, to man the Kinnvika station, and these activities formed the first and second legs of the Kinnvika spring expeditions.

Four persons from the University of Aachen and Technical University of Berlin formed the third leg in the middle of May. The first two legs comprised of four principal teams; an ice dynamical team of five persons from Scott Polar Research Institute, Uppsala University and the University of Aberystwyth, an ice coring team of five persons from the University of Lapland and University of Helsinki, a snow pit team of four persons from the Polish Geophysical Institute, University of Helsinki and Norwegian Polar Institute, and finally a logistical team of three persons from the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat. Needless to say, the thematic boundaries between the groups were amorphous. The nature of this kind of fieldwork necessarily crosses boundaries due to the art of science and the strains of logistics

Summer operations

The plan for the Kinnvika 2008 summer operations was to form two legs of activities, where the first leg (or 4^th leg in the 2008 operations) was to be shipped in with the Polish RV Horyzont II between 9 and 13 July and to be helicoptered out by Airlift in August. The first leg was mainly composed of five principal teams: a quaternary geology and stratigraphy team of five from University of Helsinki; a geophysics and geomorphology team of three from University of Silesia and University of Luxembourg, an algae biology team of two from University of Wroclaw, an invertebrate biology team of two from UNIS (Longyearbyen), and an ice and fiord sedimentary biology team of two from the University of Sheffield and British Antarctic Survey. Personnel from the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat also joined up to carry out maintenance on the machine park of Kinnvika, and personnel from University of Lapland to recover a depot of drill equipment left on Vestfonna during the spring operations.

Ice problems

The original plan was for the teams to use Kinnvika as a base station, and to access temporary satellite camps around Murchison Bay using a newly purchased RIB-boat (rigid inflatable boat). The ice conditions in the Norwegian and Barents Seas were, however, harsher than usual and thick pack ice drifting to the southwest along Hinlopen barred ship transport to this area for most of July. At the time of our attempt with RV Horyzont II the ice had an average thickness of 1.2 metre and proved too thick to force through. Two days earlier RV Lance under the flag of the Norwegian Polar Institute had left Longyearbyen to make the journey up to Hinlopen to among other duties, deliver a fuel depot at Kinnvika. Unfortunately, Lance became stuck for a couple of days in the pack ice at Wijdefjorden, and had to return to Longyearbyen. Horyzont was located further south at Magdalenafjorden, and turned back at the same time. Some of the teams had a chance to try a few scientific exercises at Magdalenafjorden, but other than that the summer expedition was a disappointment for most of the summer campaign teams.

However, this scenario is a common enough feature of Arctic fieldwork – weather shifts are extreme in these latitudes, and this summer was probably the most inhospitable in a row of many years. Snow fell throughout the summer and even if the ships had been able to reach Kinnvika, little of the planned work could have been achieved since the continuous snowfall covered the sites of interest. Furthermore, Murchison Bay was covered with ice well into August, which would have inhibited the use of the RIB for a large part of the season.

Preparing for the next season

A fifth leg was formed by the four-person climatology team from Bonn University, University of Aachen and Technical University of Berlin, revisiting the stations placed out in the spring. They flew in on 5 August and stayed in Kinnvika/Vestfonna until the 18, snowshoeing from Kinnvika to Vestfonna, and back, to be finally picked up by SS Arctica and sailed back to Longyearbyen. Due to the adverse ice conditions, we were for a time also left devoid of fuel for the coming 2009 spring activities. SS Arctica brought three drums of petrol when they transported the climatology team and at the end of August RV Lance and the Norwegian Polar Institute delivered the fuel depot at the shores of Kinnvika. Furthermore, due to the unsuccessful ice drilling operations and the considerable problems caused by the weather up on Vestfonna, we had left three depots of ice drills, camping gear and a broken snow mobile on Vestfonna. Repeated attempts made during the summer to sling this equipment down using helicopters failed due to adverse weather conditions. However on 11 September the Norwegian Coast Guard and their ship KV Svalbard succeeded in slinging the gear down to Kinnvika, and taking the ice core drill to Longyearbyen for maintenance. On this note we end the IPY-Kinnvika 2008 activities.

Summary of Kinnvika activities 2008

Below are short reports from some of the teams – full reports may be found at Kinnvika.

Ice dynamics

There is no doubt that at present parts of the ice sheets and ice caps are melting away more mass than is accumulated by snowfall. Our aim is to use ice dynamical tools to measure the mass of the ice cap Vestfonna, in order to estimate the current change in the ice mass in the region.

Annual average temperature and average wind speed measured at Vestfonna at 350 metre above sea level over the period May 2007–May 2008 was -8.0°C and 5.9 m/s.

The average accumulation in the upper part of Vestfonna this mass balance year is approximately 0.5 metre water equivalents. The ice cap has cold ridges, but wetter ice at depressions, and is wet based along the outlet glaciers studied. Ice speeds on the cold-based parts of Vestfonna are about 10 metre/year with diminishing speeds towards the ridges. The ice sheet surface seems to be in balance over a large part of the ice cap since 1996, and it is possible that Vestfonna is one of the few small ice caps remaining around the globe that is not yet suffering the effects of global warming.

Snow pits

Our aim with the fieldwork was to study the snow cover of Vestfonna in order to understand how the snow pack changes during the year. A further task was to take samples of the snow to later analyze how chemical and physical constituents are accumulated over the ice sheet. We managed to sample seven pits, most of them 2 metre deep.

Invertebrate biology

This project aims to detail the invertebrate communities on east Svalbard, focusing on Collembola sp., and complementing community descriptions with DNA fingerprinting analyses in order to find population interconnectivity rates within Svalbard and population source(s), combining this data with data from other Arctic areas. In the samples taken during August 2007 in Storsteinhalvøya 24 species of Collembola were described, including three species never described before in the area. Florabukta birdcliff proved to be a diversity hotspot, as expected. Other locations showed surprisingly high species diversity even at low densities.

Quaternary sedimentology

Our plans were to follow up the successful fieldwork carried out in the Murchisonfjorden during 2007 with a view to extending our observations to a wider range of the Vestfonna foreland. For this purpose we managed to purchase a small RIB-boat to propel ourselves along the coastline of Murchisonfjorden.