GeoBasis Disko

The GeoBasis Disko monitoring program started in 2017 as a part of the cross disciplinary Greenland Environmental Monitoring (GEM) program. GeoBasis Disko is an integrated part of the GeoBasis program, following the same standards as in Nuuk and Zackenberg (two other GEM sites) and largely focusing on the same parameters and methodologies. GeoBasis Disko is finaced by Danish Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Climate.

A close collaboration and synergy with Arctic Station that is manned year round makes it possible to collect and carry out measurements also during winter.As location Qeqertarsuaq on the south coast of the Disko island, represent a Greenlandic west coast climate, with annual mean temperatures just below 0°C, with discontinuous permafrost, and as such remarkably different from the two existing GEM sites. Further, the Disko bay area is highly interesting from a socioeconomic perspective due its high population and active fishery industry, and as one of the most popular tourist destinations in Greenland.

The primary objective of GeoBasis Disko is to establish baseline knowledge on the dynamics of fundamental abiotic terrestrial parameters within the environment/ecosystem around Arctic Station. This is done through a long term collection of data that includes the following sub-topics;

• Snow properties; including spatial and temporal variation in snow cover, depth and density.
• Soil properties; spatially distributed monitoring of key soil parameters such as temperature, moisture, and concentration of nutrient ions
• Meteorology; monitoring of essential meteorological variables across various surface types and elevations.
• Gas Flux monitoring; plot and landscape scale flux monitoring of CO2, H2O and energy in wet and dry ecosystems.
• Hydrology; monitoring of seasonal variation in river water discharge, chemistry and suspended sediment.
• Geomorphology; monitoring of shorelines, coastal cliff foots and cross-shore profiles.

GeoBasis focuses on selected abiotic parameters in order to describe the state of Arctic terrestrial environments and their potential feedback effects in a changing climate. As such, inter-annual variation and long-term trends are of paramount importance.

GeoBasis Disko is a direct follow -up on the monitoring program DiskoBasis (2013-2017). When Disko/Arctic Station became incorporated in the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) collaboration some of the monitoring components from DiskoBasis are contiuoued under the sub program GeoBasis.