Svalbard

Imaggeo on Mondays: Wandering the frozen Svalbard shore

Matt Trevers December 17, 2018

Wandering the frozen shore. Credit: Matt Trevers (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

These ethereal, twisted ice sculptures litter the frozen shoreline of Tempelfjorden, Svalbard, giving the landscape an otherworldly feel and creating a contrast with the towering ice cliff of the glacier and the mountains behind. They are natural flotsam, the scoured remnants of icebergs calved from the Tunabreen glacier, washed up on the shoreline. These icebergs were calved from the Tunabreen gl ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Digging out a glacier’s story

Monika Mendelova July 30, 2018

Digging out the story of a glacier. Credit: Monika Mendelova (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

This photograph shows landforms on Coraholmen Island in Ekmanfjorden, one of the fjords found in the Norwegian archipelago, Svalbard. These geomorphic features were formed by Sefströmbreen, a tidewater glacier, when it surged in the 1880s. Although all glaciers flow, some glaciers undergo cyclic changes in their flow. This is called surging, and glaciers that surge are called surging glaciers. Dur ...[Read More]

Imaggeo on Mondays: Arctic cottongrass in Svalbard

Olivia Trani July 2, 2018

Eriophorum scheuchzeri spp. arcticum. Credit: Gunnar Mallon (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

In the High Arctic, where vegetation is limited in height, cottongrass stands out as some of the tallest plant species around. This photo shows a wispy white patch of Arctic cottongrass growing amongst other tundra vegetation in the Advent river floodplain of Adventdalen, a valley on the Norwegian archipelago island Svalbard. Svalbard is of particular scientific interest as it is a relatively warm ...[Read More]

Volcanic ash layers in Svalbard hold clues to the formation of the North Atlantic

Morgan Jones August 4, 2017

This is what the Central Basin of Svalbard looks like today. Since the formation of the sedimentary sequence, the area has been uplifted and then eroded. Rocks that were formed in shallow seas now form high points cut by deep fjords and glaciers. Credit: Morgan Jones

This guest post by Dr Morgan Jones (a Researcher in Volcanology at the Centre of Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the University of Oslo, Norway) describes the latest findings of his multidisciplinary research into how the North Atlantic formed. His open access study, in collaboration with colleagues at CEED and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is published in the Nature Journ ...[Read More]