Field Trips - Greenland
West Greenland, August 2-8
12-20 participants
Price: DKK 17,400
The price includes air-transport Copenhagen-Kangerlussuaq Atlantic airport south Greenland; air-transport Kangerlussuaq Atlantic airport-Ilulisat;
helicopter-transport Ilulisat-Ququrtarsuaq on Disko Island; overnights incl. all meals, lunchboxes and non-alcoholic beverages at Disko Field Station
and Youth Hostels in Ilulisat and possibly Kangerlussuaq; 1-day boat excursion on Disko Field Station's vessel Porsild; 1-day bus excursion to the
Greenland ice-sheet at Kangerlussuaq. Participants minimum 12, maximum 20.
Tour guides: Rasmus Ejrnæs and Henrik Balslev, University of Aarhus.
The excursion will go to the Arctic Station of the University of Copenhagen, situated on the islands Disko (69°15'N, 53°34'W).
Disko is famous for its rich vegetation owing to the rich volcanic basalt soils and abundant homeothermic springs, and to its
position between the high arctic and low arctic.
Here we will see dry tundra with dwarf shrubs (Empetrum hermafroditum, Vaccinium uliginosum,
Phyllodoce coerulea, Cassiope tetragona, Carex bigelowii, Pedicularis spp.), tall herb vegetation (Angelica archangelica, Alchemilla glomerulans,
Epilobium latifolium, Festuca richardsonii), meadows (Carex rariflora, Listera chordata, Platanthera hyperborea, Leuchorchis albida ssp. straminea),
snowbed vegetation (Salix herbacea, Taraxacum sect. crocea, Ranunculus hyperboreus, Harimanella hypnoides), fens, flushes and springs with luxurious
mosses and cyperaceae as well as rocky outcrops with lichens, saxifrages and drabas.
A one-day excursion will climb 900 m to the major glacier of Disko, which is slowly retreating.
There will be excellent opportunities for whale spotting (humpback whales, fin whales etc.).
On the home trip we will stop over in Ilulissat and walk to the Icefiord (Unesco Heritage).
The average weather for Ilulisat near Disko Island 1961-1990 (and the rest of Greenland) is available at the
Danish Meteorological Institute.
The weather forecast for the coming 5 days is available here.
