Latitude 66

Jill, Jackie, Aimee, Allison, Mara, Kyrstin & Anika

It was bittersweet as we left the familiar community of St. Kate’s as some of our fellow friends and classmates (Allison Hutson, Mara Blish and Kyrstin Danielson, alumna Anika Bratt, who is now a graduate student at the University of Minnesota) came to help pack up, get us to the airport, and even help carry our 14 containers to baggage check. We were all geared up and on the plane, and as we took off, we got a clear view (after much rain) of the human-dominated landscape we call home.  It wasn’t long before I looked out my window and saw the Great Lakes followed by the vast open spaces of northern Canada covered in snow and ice.  After several hours flying over the ocean, which was largely blocked from view by clouds, the coast of Greenland began to come into view. Contrary to its name, Greenland is covered with the largest expanses of

Sunset over Greenland

snow that I’ve ever seen.   Although we didn’t have seats facing the sunset, the other side of the plane provided views of a sky striped with shades of blue, purple, and pink that illuminated the clouds as the sun set.   Almost immediately, the sun rose again and the tips of the mountains in Greenland were lit up by the bright sun.    We did not view land again until we ducked down out of the thick clouds and got our first look at Iceland and its moonscape-like quality. 

Since we have been here for several days now, I have had a chance to see more of the unique landscape of Iceland.  The island is geologically young and was formed from volcanic eruptions from a giant volcanic hot spot that sits on the ridge of the Eurasian and American tectonic plates, which are constantly moving away from each other.  This volcanic island has geothermally-heated pools and streams that are naturally warmed as water flows underground through heated rock, warming the water before it emerges at the ground surface.   Iceland is also located close to the Arctic Circle, with the capitol Reykjavík positioned at a latitude of 66° north, where it does not get very warm, even during the summer.   At this high latitude, Iceland experiences incredibly long days during the summer months and even though the sun sets for a couple hours, it never gets truly dark.   This midnight sun allows the locals to take advantage of being outside as much as possible.   

Iceland is certainly also a very unique place to study from an ecological standpoint.  Since the island is so young, the volcanic basalt is very phosphorus-rich, suggesting that the growth of many organisms here is not limited by available phosphorus (an essential nutrient for growth), but instead constrained by a lack of available nitrogen – another essential nutrient.  This provides a good environment for researching nitrogen fixers, which are bacteria that can acquire 

Fields of lupine cover the hillslopes within the city and
surrounding area, all along our drive to the field site.

nitrogen from gas in the atmosphere rather than the surrounding  water, land, or fertilizer in more human-dominated ecosystems.  Here in Iceland, it appears that there are nitrogen fixers everywhere, including the streams (which we will focus our studies on this summer), and even in terrestrial environments - such as the lupines and lichens, and even the mosses, which are very abundant here - all contain or house bacteria that can fix nitrogen from the air.  They are everywhere!