To seek answers

I just checked out the academic steps on the university (very frustrating not to know):

1. Bachelor's degree 3yr
2. Degree of Master  2yr
3. Degree of Doctor (PhD) 4-5yr

so.. total 10 years... and after some millions of publications and tutorial job you may become a:
      4.  Professor


On Svalbard I'll end my Bachelor's degree and, back home, I'll do the residue of my master's education, which will take me a year or so. Hopefully I'l do a PhD in gothenburg. 


No news about The Svalbard excursion... I hope I'll get some more information soon... 

polar bear in longyearbyen

yesterday a polar bear was seen in the village...

http://www.svalbardposten.no/nyheter/isbj%C3%B8rn-i-byen

Isbjørn

"3000 bears. 2500 humans." is the first thing you see if you visit Svalbads homepage (svalbard.net). Rumor says that Svalbard is a fantastic place if you want to do outdoor activiteis. You can go kayaking, dog sleeding, hiking, skiing or why not see the landscape from a scooter?! All activiteis together with a very experienced guide who know everything about Svalbard. But if you want to do something on your own, it becomes much more difficult. You're not allowed to walk away from the village on your own. If you are a very stubborn person and really want to do some activities without a guide, than you have to pay lots of money, like an insurance, before you leave... Otherwise they won't search for you if you're missing... And all this is because of the polar bears.

I'll collect data in the field almost every day for two months. I will do it somewhere outside of Longyearbyen. The first thing this means is that I most have someone with me, cause you're not allowed to leave town on your own, I think this someone will be a PhD from the university of Lund. The second thing is that I most have a gun with me, cause you're not allowed to leave your home without a gun (they even have lockers on the bank for rifles). The third thing is that I have to do a polar bear theory course, so I have a chance to survive in the field.

The best thing to do if you see a polar bear is to, of course, leave. If you're walking away you should leave something behind, for example a glove (that the polar bear will investigate for some seconds), just to save time... I heard from my supervisor that the first thing you'll learn on the polar bear course is not to be interested... "Don't stay and look, leave!", can someone imagine me leave if I could have a look at a polar bear... I can't!

But please don't be worried; believe it or not, I am a natural talent when it comes to shooting guns!

Next week I'll have a meeting with my supervisor and a professor from Gothenburg, because they have offered me to start a PhD (in swedish: doktorand-utbildning) on the department of plant and environmental science... more about that after the meeting!

The project

In my last notice i just acknowledged the svalbard trip.  But now it's time for me to explain what my mission on svalbard is...

It was some months ago, I was in Tarfala research station and in Abisko to do a small project. On this trip I realized that the arctic environment is very interesting and also vulnerable for changes. Back in Gothenburg  I spoke to some of my teachers about my interest. A few weeks after I recieved an email from a PhD that informed me about a biogeochemical project on Svalbard. I contacted the guy responible for the project and after some discussions about grades and qualifications I was included in a research team.

This project will be my bachelor thesis. I will do feildwork on Svalbard in two months and then go back to Gothenburg for analysis and report writing. The project is a 30 ECTS course and will end in january 2012. In field I will investigate carbon dioxide fluxes from plants. In a simpler way: I will put a glass pot on the ground and continuously check how much carbon dioxide there is in the pot.. The concentration of carbon dioxide will be higher and higher the longer time the glass pot will cover the plants... exciting ha?!

The bigger question is if climate change affects the amount of CO2 fluxes from plants... Which we think is probable, cause the length of the growing season will be longer if the climate becomes warmer...

Hopefully this report I'm writing will be a part of the bigger groups article... If so it will be published, and that's great! The only thing I need to do is to write an amazing article in english and do a very good statistical analysis and find some very good litterture that strengthen my theories and so on... no problems, piece of cake!

That's all from now!

The first meeting

After several weeks, or maybe months, with uncertainty about the future this meeting came as a gift from heaven... Well this talk about heaven would have been a good metaphor if I was religious, which I'm not, of course... I'm actually trying to do some scientific work here, and there is no reason to involve GOD in that cind of dissection... Understand me right.. this work I'll do, later, is not a dissection in it's true meaning (to cut up a dead body and investigate her inside...), what I mean here is that this kind of work includes a lot of data analysis and lot of statistical work... so why intermingle GOD?

The first meeting was with my Bachelor thesis supervisor, Robert Björk... In swedish Björk is a tree, namely Birch... My supervisor is not a birch.. He is a guy, about 35 years old who spends a lot of time on his job... I have no idea who he is, but I do know that he, as everybody else on the university, is a geek... We had this meeting today and it was awesome.. We went trough lots of mail conversations with people involved in this thing I'm about to do.. After the meeting I was so much more informed about my future then before I meet this Birch... Good!


In august I'm leaving this "free country" with all the "small people" living there to be part of a group of climate geeks (scientists) in the west... NORWAY... or shall I precise it a bit?

I'm going up north... to SVALBARD!!!

Svalbard
The mid annual temperature is -8,15°C, if you are very un-informed about the world around you, this may be very hard to believe... Almost the cooldest place on earth (this is true if you don't take into account antarctica and the real arctic... and also if you ignore some places in canada, russia, alaska etc.)...

Well if you've never heard about svalbard, here I am, your illuminator... Svalbard is a group of islands with aprox 2800 people suffering from scurvy (because of the lack of fresh fruit and vegies) and depression (caused by total darkness for months). The group of islands are located a bit north of northern Norway (lots of nor... in that sentence... You got the point?) and are a part of the ARCTIC! The biggest island, Spitsbergen, belongs to Norway and this is "the place to be". BUT (take this very seriously) Spitsbergen is not "the place to be" for more than 5 years, because of the health risk.. as I said before (with no scientific base) the people there are suffering very much because of the lack of fruit!

Okay, I'll write more about my journey to Nybyen on Spitsbergen some other day (otherwise no one will read this cause it's too looooong...)

See ya later alligator (as my mother allways says)!!