End of the summer school and beginning of the french-swedish collaboration...

Thank you to all participants, lecturers, organisation and partners of the summer school. Despite the density of the week and the diversity of subjects, this has been a great success that hopefully will enable future collaboration between France and Sweden in sub-polar regions.

Wednesday, June 23rd

This morning Elisabeth Michel delivered a lecture about climate and deep ocean circulation interactions. Elisabeth Michel is responsible of the paleocean research group at the “Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de L’Environnement” a joint unit of the CEA, the CNRS and the University of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Lars Olof Björn followed, focusing on stratospheric ozone and how this affects terrestrial vegetation.

During the afternoon some of the participants decided to go hiking to Paddus.

Tuesday, June 22nd

Reiner Giesler is a professor at the University of Umeå in the Ecology and Environmental sciences department.  He is the founder and the director of the CIRC (Climate Impact Research Centre) which is partly located at Abisko research station. This morning he held a lecture at the summer school about effects of climate change on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In the afternoon he led the excursion to Mont Njulla. Before the excursion, Marc Lebouvier from the CNRS in France spoke about the impact of invasive species and climate change on sub-antarctic terrestrial ecosystems.

This evening we had the last group presentations. Group 4 is composed by Maria Ingimarsdóttir, Elefhteria Palkopoulou and Artabaze Shams.

Monday, June 21st

This day Sami knowledge and climate change in the Arctic were the main thematics. Marie Roué from the CNRS and the Museum of Natural History in France started by telling us about the traditional Sami life and what their problems could be if their conditions change. Marie Roué is an Anthropologist who has much experience of sub-arctic research.

After this, we had a guided tour of Abisko by Naturum staff.

Geir Rune Rauset, Florence Revelin and Hélène Subrémon, group 3, presented themselves  and their research projects. The day summary was followed by a discussion about the researchers striving for objectivity and the relationship between human and nature.

Sunday, June 20th

Maurice Hullé started by giving us an introduction of compared ecology on aphid populations between Arctic (Spitsberg) and sub-antarctic (Kerguelen). He explained how climate change might affect the aphid populations in opposite ways in the two regions. Maurice Hullé is at the INRA (French Institute for Agricultural and Food Research). His field of research is the ecology of aphid populations and for the last ten years he has been interested at studying the ecology of aphid populations in Polar Regions where they develop particular adaptations to face environment.

Françoise Hennion followed by a lecture not about insects but about plants in the sub-antarctic regions. She mainly spoke about their response to climate change.  Françoise Hennion is a CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research) researcher.

We spent the afternoon at the Stordalen Mire (Torneträsk lake) where Erik Lundin told us about his research on carbon turnover in subarctic aquatic systems. He showed us his measure instruments on field. Then, we met Patrick Crill who explained us the mechanisms of permafrost in the region.

Saturday, June 19th

We spent the morning listening to Yves Frenot, director of IPEV, speaking about sub-antarctic research, focusing on French Austral Islands. Among other things we learned about the climate and the history of the islands and considered its influence on the islands biodiversity. Yves Frenot is Director of Research at CNRS and Director of the IPEV, the French Polar Institute. He highlighted the purpose of this summer school regarded as stepstone for further French-Swedish collaboration and an inspiration for other bilateral projects.

Emmanuel Lemeur then hold an interesting lecture about glaciers and how they can be an indicator of climate change. He began with a rapid overview of the different forms of ice on Earth before he put the focus on glaciers and ice sheets. Finally he explained how a glacier/ an ice sheet works and why they are interesting for climate/environmental purposes. The next two hours (after lunch) consisted of a practical climate-modeling workshop. Emmanuel Lemeur is a researcher at LGGE (Laboratoire de glaciology et géophysique de l’environnement) in Grenoble and he teached at the university.

Gunhild “Ninis” Rosqvist, head of the Department for physical geography and quaterny geology at Stockholm University and director of Tarfala station, continued speaking about glaciers and climate change. She also presented the Swedish Research Platforms, Tarfala and Abisko, and the most important Swedish glaciers for research.

The last activity for this day was the student presentations. The turn had come to the group 2, which is composed of Elin Högström, Anouschka Hof and Mathieu Laparie.

Friday, June 18th

The day started with a lecture by Patrick Brouder about the Tourism and the climate change in Swedish mountains. Patrick Brouder is a PhD student at the Department of Geography in Umeå University. His research on Nature-based tourism is under the auspices of the Outdoor Recreation in Change (Friluftsliv i förändring) Programme which is supported by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket).

Then we had a guided tour of Abisko facilities and outskirts with Lars Olof Björn. Lars Olof Björn is professor emeritus of Lund University and presently professor at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou. He knows Abisko well since many of his field experiments have been conducted at the Abisko Scientific Research Station.

After lunch we listened to Christine David from the IPEV (French Polar Institute) speaking about the importance of long term monitoring in Polar Regions through the example of ozone depletion. Christine David, recently appointed Deputy-director of the IPEV, the French Polar institute, but is still a scientist at the IPSL (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace), working on Stratospheric Ozone, Antarctic Stratosphere and its interactions with climate.

Leif G. Anderson, then, presented a lecture on Biogeochemical processes in the Siberian Shelf Sea and their implication for carbon fluxes. Leif G. Anderson is Professor in hydrosphere sciences at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Gothenburg. He was part of the ISSS (International Siberian Shelf Study) international research expedition including participants from Russia, Sweden, USA and other nations that travelled the length of the Siberian coast to the East Siberian Sea in August and September 2008.

The last thing we did this day was listening to group 1 student presentations. All students have been divided into four groups. Each group is responsible for summarizing one or two specific days activities after having presented themselves and their research projects.  Group 1 is composed of Tim Horstkotte, Nathalie van der Putten and Erik Lundin.