The expedition report giving an overview of the Arctic Research Group (ARG) 2023 Expedition to Recherchefjorden in South-West Spitsbergen during August 2023 has been completed and made available to the grant giving organisations which supported the expedition research and copies are to be lodged with the British Library and the Scott Polar Research Institute.
This was a ten-person, multidisciplinary scientific expedition that built upon the ARG members’ long experience of Svalbard exploration that goes back to the late 1970s.
The field area lay in a remote area of fjord, glacier, mountain and tundra and was accessible only by helicopter or a 12 hour boat journey from Longyearbyen. As on the previous expedition in 2019, for cost reasons, the boat option was taken here.
The expedition established a base camp under canvas on the eastern shore of Recherchefjorden and used this as the base for its work. The groundwater work necessitated an outlier camp to be established briefly in Chamberlindalen to the west.
Some of the projects (such as the beach pollution work) carried out on this expedition built on experience gained in previous expeditions, others were new to the ARG. All of the five scientific projects achieved all, or some, of their goals and in all cases provided useful data which were worked up on return from the field.
The ARG is a charity registered in England, dependent wholly on the generosity of its donors and sponsors and the time freely given by its volunteers.
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