Permafrost Outreach 2009

This is exciting news! Cantawell school can join us to establish permafrost station.Cantwell School Principal and Science Teacher (Peter Hauschka) support our program. Tohru and Kenji leave 5:30am at Fairbanks for catching 9am science class at Cantwell. Cantawell is about160 mile south of Fairbanks (It takes about 3 hour drive). We made on time and great time with students. after the lecture, we had a big challenge to find permafrost. This area is sporadic permafrost region and thick glacial till and outwash (gravel and boulder!). It is not favable to drill and to look for permafrost. Finally, we success to find permafrost by opinion from local residence.

Tohru and Kenji visit Manley Hot Spring on 21st of September.
Basically, we were trying to drill a deeper hole next to the existing
hole at this time. When we drilled the first hole in the Spring of 2007, we could only go 3.5m deep.
We thought it was because the permafrost (and the air temperature
that day) was very low and ice was re-forming on the bit.
So, we wanted to give it another try to get down to 6m.
That is the standard depth for the outreach program.
Anyway, the drilling did not go well.
The reason why we couldn’t go deeper was because there was a layer of
gravel.
With the equipment we had it was a bit too much to tackle at the time.
So there’s no change in the system or the monitoring station.

Tohru and Kenji visit Healy on Sep. 20. When we look at temperature data, we do not see permafrost indication at schoolyard site. There was permafrost in 70s-80s. this site is degradating permafrost last 20 years!

We are visting Wainwright. Wainwright is quiet beautiful beach side village little south west (70mile) from Barrow. Art Clark (USGS)and his team drilled here in June and to spike through the permafrost (330m). He donate this hole to local school education. This is one of the greatest hole and also extreamly deepest(380m).
Vlad and Kenji had good time with high school students and new teacher (Emily) in the morning. then Vlad start measurements to the borehole. Al (principal) cordinate to meet student with Kenji. About 160 students are here in this town.

Vlad (Romanovsky) and Kenji (Yoshikawa) came back to Barrow on Sep.17.
Kenji had chance to talk new teacher (Emily) and students. After classroom, Kenji replace datalogger.

We are finnaly back to Alaska!
School was already start almost one month ago! We are going to catch up 2007 fall semester outreach program.
At first, Vladimir Romanovsky and Kenji Yoshikawa went up to North Slope villages (Barrow and Wainwright). I will wright travel report next a few days!

Nuuk is our last vititing for our Greenland trip. Nuuk is the capital of the Greenland (Karallit Nuunat) as well as biggest city.
We look for permafrost here. Most of the land in Nuuk is absence of permafrost.
Permafrost is only presence at the base of north facing slope but also thicker peat area.
We would like say that this is southern boundary of the permafrost distribution in Greenland!

After the drilling, we packed up and back to Fairbanks.

After two boreholes established in Ilulisat. we are moving to Sisimut. Sisimut is second largest town in Greenland and has technical collage. We stay in collage cabin and fix most of the augers at thier wearhouse.

After look around boreholes in Kagerlussuaq, we are move to Ilulissat.
Ilulisat is beautiful town (population 4000). The name “ilulissat” came from
“ice berg” in Greenlandic. Many icebergs were alway surround town.
We drill three boreholes to install data loggers.