After the 2020 covid break, we travelled to Greenland again in 2021 to conduct field work for two projects: GrISMEME and MARCH4G.

In July, the GrISMEME crew (Jakub, Arnošt from CTS, Petra, and student field assistant Terka) collected samples from 15 stations in the ablation zone of the Greenland ice sheet between Kangerlussuaq and Ilulissat. They also sampled a reference transect at the beginning and the end of the sampling mission in order to control for temporal change in microbial communities over the sampling period. All samples were transported to Prague and the extraction of nucleic acids is in progress. We hope to see the first results in the coming winter.

In August and September, we started field work on the first work package of MARCH4G. The team consisted of Marek, Jakub Ž (also called K1 due to the high number of Jakubs on the project), Jade, Anna, Jakub T alias K2, and Petra. We managed to visit three out of the four regions planned (Qaanaaq, Ilulissat, Kangerlussuaq); due to getting stuck in Qaanaaq for a week we could not reach the Upernavik area and will come back next year. We have collected samples of air, meltwater, and sediment from a variety of settings and will be analysing them in the coming months.

Overall, this was a long and exhausting field season, but it gave us a lot of food for thought was absolutely worth it!