For the project ‘Sediments from the Greenland Ice Sheet: A Powerful but Overlooked Influence on Marine Productivity and Environments’, researchers will make unique in-situ measurements that can provide insight into the number of sediments and nutrients that glaciers contribute to the fjords in Greenland in the winter. The nutrient content is important for marine ecosystems. It has previously been under-exposed to what extent there was an exchange of water and a leaching of nutrients from the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet via the glaciers to the Greenland fjords in the winter.
The specially built drone has already been used in a project supported by the Villum Foundation. Now it will be made even more advanced and will, among other things, be used to retrieve water samples from the bottom of the fjord. The measurements will show how water, sediments and nutrients are distributed in the water very close to glacier fronts.
“Measurements from the actual locations are an indispensable tool for confirming what remote sensing from satellites tells us. Both are important elements in helping us to understand the interaction between glaciers, fjords and the aquatic environment,” says Nanna B. Karlsson, professor at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and project manager.
Nanna B. Karlsson received DKK 2,830,449 from the Novo Nordisk Foundation in December 2024.
The project includes researchers from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Aarhus University (AU) and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (GINR).