As this week starts I am already feeling like a potato. Extremely busy weeks have gone by, filled with all the wonderful exiting stuff you can do in Svalbard, both science and non-science. I am working on my master's thesis at the moment. It is about the Mediumfjellet thrust stack, located at the western side of Isforden on Svalbard, and I am making fracture models for predicting reservoir quality. At the moment I am trying to get into stratigraphy and other work that has been done in the area, to be ready for my five-week long fieldwork trip in august. Being a student at UNIS and at Svalbard does not only mean hard work. Nevertheless, I think this is the place where I have developed my skills the most. Lots of extremely great and exclusive things are going ...

Thank-you to everyone who was involved with launch events, who launched virtual balloons, who launched real balloons (see the Swedish launch web-cast!), those behind the scenes, and those on stage. IPY Celebrations around the world on March 1st, and throughout this week, have been a huge success. You can watch those you missed on the Arctic Portal, or still launch your virtual balloon now, and throughout IPY, to recognise the importance of the polar regions to the whole planet. Here is a map showing balloons that have been launched around the world (you can zoom in on where you live or zoom out to see the world map!): ...

IPY launch events around the world can be viewed live at the Arctic Portal. We also encourage everyone to launch a virtual balloon and show how many people around the world care about the polar regions and are interested in IPY. Everyone is welcome to join in, young or old, polar or tropical! The Official Opening Ceremony takes place in Paris at 11am local time. That is UTC 10:00, or, 1am in Anchorage, 5am in New York, 7am in Santiago, 3.30pm in Calcutta, 7pm in Tokyo, and 9pm in Sydney. You can watch it live or after the event on the web at the Arctic Portal, where you will also find webcasts of other national launch events from around th...

For the official launch in Paris at Palais de la d'couverte on 1st of March, the french postal administration, in connection with the french branch of the International Association for Polar Philately, "A.I.Phi.Pol", will open a special postal station with a special cancellation and postal stationary (pre-stamped envelope) especially designed for this historic day. The special postal station will be open in the morning for the conference attenders and in the afternoon for the public. The "A.I.Phi.Pol" have also arranged to have a small quantity of booklets available containing IPY stamps from the eight arctic countries. The booklets will be available on the opening day at the face value. To reserve a booklet, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it "

Watch IPY launch events on-line at the Arctic Portal and elsewhere. Throughout this week, over twenty nations around the world are celebrating the launch of the International Polar Year 2007-2008. New Zealand, Indigenous People, Argentina, and the Ukraine have already held extremely successful events. This week, Monday will see Press and Participants gathering in London, Strasbourg, and Washington DC, and Portugal will be holding their kick-off event on Wednesday. Thursday is the big day, with the Global Launch occurring in Paris at 1000 UTC (1100 local Central European Time) and national celebrations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greenland, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Norway, ...

The Circumpolar Arctic is one of the least technologically connected regions in the world. In an effort to change that, the people who call this vast geographic area home have been stepping up to take their rightful place in the growing global information society. Over the past two decades, rapid changes to communication technologies have created a steady rise of organizations and leaders dedicated to finding ways to better promote and share aboriginal experiences, current events, traditional stories and art from all high Arctic regions. Two events, the Shared Arctic: Contemporary Circumpolar Artwork Exhibition and a Round Table Discussion entitled Breaking the Ice: Communications with the Arctic have been scheduled in Geneva, Switzerland to celebrate both the d...

The following two postdoctoral fellowships are available on International Polar Year 2007-2008 projects led by the Environment and Natural Resources Institute at University of Alaska Anchorage: Soil Ecology, Soil Biogeochemistry The incumbent will conduct and supervise experimental work elucidating the consequences of deeper snow, shrub increases, and effects on soil-plant dynamics. The fellow will join a team that has conduced long-term experiments at Toolik Lake, Alaska since 1994 as part of ITEX (International Tundra Experiment) and has established a new set of experimental snow depth treatments that will be used in this research. A significant port...

Investigating microbial communities that exist in various nooks and crannies of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems is much like exploring outer space. The microbial universe on this planet is a great unknown. In fact, researchers suspect that only less than 1% of all microorganisms have been identified and documented. Microbial communities play a variety of essential roles, in particular, in complex geochemical processes of global elemental cycling. The mystery of the microbial world in terms of identifying who is out there (community structure) and what they are doing (community function) sparks my scientific curiosity. My research questions explore the genetic diversity of microbial communities in biofilms that layer sediments and rock surfaces in Arctic stream ...

The Arctic Portal provides a comprehensive gateway to the Arctic on the internet, increases co-operation between both public and private parties across the Arctic and grants exposure to Arctic related information.

The Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) is hosting its kick-off meeting at the Abisko Scientific Research Station, Sweden on the 22nd to 24th of February 2007. PYRN (www.pyrn.org) is an international effort under the patronage of the International Permafrost Association (IPA) to bring young permafrost researchers together during the international polar year and beyond. The first phase of the PYRN project saw more than 300 young researchers from 31 countries join the network. It rapidly became the largest young researcher-driven network in the field of cryospheric science. PYRN offers, news, information and support to its members. It has sent 17 monthly newsletters since its start in 2005, maint...