Austria has a lot of bank holidays, especially in spring and especially in May (6 days!!). On top of that I took three holiday days to go to Venice next week... To summarize, because of holidays and sickness, the last month of this blog is one of few working days, indeed.

 

However, today is normal. Apart from making some minor improvements and adaptations in a code for processing data files, I got the sensor issue (mentioned last time) solved. More sensors were not to be found, but fortunately I can afford to order new ones. The deadline for sending material is passed since some time already, but these few items I can even bring in my normal luggage.

 

Ahead of me in the nearest future now, before August when we leave to Samoylov and thereafter Abisko, is to plan for the expeditions and to finalize the project I presented partly at EGU, namely to identify and estimate problems with soil moisture retrieval in areas of permafrost that is possibly related to seasonal water dynamics.

 

There is also some tasks for the PAGE21 YR team that needs to be ready and done before the field season. Currently, we are considering the usefulness of protocol templates for harmonizing sampling procedures of various kinds in field and would want to bring this up for discussion at the YR workshop in september. As I am currently trying to get an overview of data available for validation of remotely sensed soil moisture (for my project) and temperature (notably for Catherine Ottle, LSCE), I think that such template protocols may be quite handy.

I look forward to reading some fresh blogs that take over for the summer soon here from our partners!

 

Best regards,

Elin

 

 

 

 

The other week I had a monthly young researcher Skype meeting with Matthias Siewert (Stockholm)and Stefanie Weege (Potsdam). One topic was the cooperation, recently initiated between the Canadian Permafrost Research Program ADAPT Early Career Researchers Association (AECRA) and of PAGE21 Young Researchers Association. We try to organize for the AECRA executive committee to join us at the PAGE21 YR workshop that will take place just before the general assembly in Abisko .

 

We already have a rather clear idea of how we can make best use of this workshop day in Abisko. And luckily, we already have some contribution from the other PAGE21 young researchers in the form of ideas and assistance with the program. We are quite optimistic that the internal cooperation within PAGE21, across as well as within disciplines, will be strengthened as well.

 

 

 

 

Now, I'm calling it a day earlier than usual to go home and bake because tomorrow we have "institutskaffee" and I am supposed to bring something. This is a meeting intended for news concerning our research group as a whole, including issues about teaching, infrastructure or conferences, or important dates etc. Also, for a pleasant atmosphere we commonly celebrate the last birthday persons: they bring cakes and get birthday wishes. There is quite a bit of a delay though, since my birthday was in March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The permafrost sessions started on Monday morning. The oral part focused on: permafrost and associated natural systems; interactions with climate; impacts of changes on natural and human systems; and the measurement, understanding, modeling, and parametrization of corresponding processes.

 

From PAGE21 Annett Bartsch presented the "DUE PERMAFROST: A Circumpolar Remote Sensing Service for Permafrost - Evaluation Case Studies and Intercomparison with Regional Climate Model Simulations", and Hugues Lantuit presented the "Temporal and spatial dynamics of mega retrogressive thaw slumps revealed by 2D/3D geophysics and mechanical implications for the pace of coastal thermokarst on Herschel Island, western Canadian Arctic". The afternoon continued with permafrost related poster sessions, including my poster.

 

This first day was a bit tricky for us when it comes to timing, since the Austrian Polar Research Institute (APRI) happened to have their opening simultaneously. It meant a bit of going back and forth in full speed for my part. But all went pretty fine.

 

The EGU week then continued with WP meetings at TU Wien: WP5 on tuesday, WP8 on Wednesday. Furthermore, talks were given during the EGU by eg. Jean-Pierre Lanckmann on about data management and by Ko van Huissteden on the topic thermokarst lakes from the Last Glacial and Early Holocene.

 

In case you are interested in reading more about specific topics you should check out this link to the EGU GeoLog, and by the way, this is the second place winner of the photo competition for this year. Not bad, is it?

 

Apart from the work days, as always when there are visitors in town, it was an occasion for me to play the tourist and spend some extra evening energy on culture as well as sports, including amazing music and climbing.

 

Lastly I want to say thanks to everyone that came to Vienna for the EGU, because it really felt as if it was you who brought the spring! And it is still here. With 20 degrees and sun (which, for a Swedish person like myself, is actually rather summer than spring...).

 

Elin

 

 

 

 

 

 

/Elin

 

 

 

 

 

The Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation (GEO) where I work is located in central Vienna. I share office with Markus who works on drought issues and Richard who's project manager. None of them do much programming, which is otherwise the case for most people here. It's a good environment to be in when you want to develop those skills, which I do.

 

My background is otherwise Earth Science and Physical Geography: for my bachelor and masters thesis, respectively, I did remote sensing of ice sheet surface melt (Greenland) and worked on patterned ground morphology (Abisko). Before coming to Vienna, I also worked at Uppsala University, with teaching and research.

 

My masters thesis concerned subglacial water detection via remote sensing techniques and I mainly worked with Matlab. It was my first encounter with any programming. Matlab is pretty similar to IDL (Interactive Data Language), which is much used here at GEO. IDL is a vectorized, numerical and interactive high-level language designed specifically for scientific programming and analysis, including image processing. In addition to Matlab and IDL, I also use ENVI (ENvironment for Visualizing Images), which is a software application for processing and analyzing geospatial imagery, as well as ArcGIS for some applications.

 

That is all for todays work presentation.
The top photo shows Markus (left) last week when his research project won the Neptun Waterprice 2013. The bottom one is a screen print illustrations of some weather data plotting in IDL (right) and ENVI image analysis (left).