A new project in Iceland

I'm in Iceland for a few days working on a new project - new for me. Colleagues at BGS have been working here for years, most recently developing a glacial observatory on the Virkisjokull glacier. Lots of good science stuff has been going on here, learning more about how glaciers move, how they create landforms, and how they retreat as the climate warms up. Most recently they've started to look at what happens to the meltwater that flows off the glacier, and this is where I come in. My part is to get some boreholes drilled into the sandur - the huge, thick sand and gravel outwash plain in front of the glacier - to investigate how much groundwater is in the sandur, and how it interacts with the fast-flowing meltwater river that flows across it.

This trip has been a whistlestop one to meet the driller who is going to sink these boreholes for us, for me to get introduced to the glacier and the field site, to do a couple of repair jobs and river-gauging measurements, and to meet the local landowners and national park reps to explain what we're going to be doing. It's going well so far & I've seen plenty of appetite-whetting, impressive glaciers! I'll probably be posting a lot more about this later in the summer when hopefully I'll be here for a few weeks overseeing the drilling and carrying out experiments on the boreholes.