After four intensive weeks of fieldwork, the summer campaign of the UNDER project (Exploring groUNDwater–surface watER interactions in High Arctic catchments) has been successfully completed in Ny-Ålesund and Hornsund.
The project, funded by SIOS, is a collaboration between IGG-CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) and the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences (IGF PAN). It was supported by the Polish Polar Station Hornsund on Spitsbergen and the Dirigibile Italia research base.
The aim of the project is to better understand changes in the water cycle, focusing on interactions between surface and groundwater in selected High Arctic catchments. This knowledge will help assess their current state, understand the impacts of climate change, and predict the future evolution of water resources.
As part of the field campaign, we conducted:
- Physicochemical monitoring
- Sampling of surface and groundwater
- Flow measurements in selected catchment areas
The collected data will now be processed to compare hydrological processes in glacial and non-glacial catchments around Ny-Ålesund and Hornsund. These results will be integrated with previous data to develop a comprehensive comparative framework for Svalbard.
