The UAK (Useful Arctic Knowledge: partnership for research and education) Research School 2020 takes place from 20-30 June onboard KV Svalbard during a cruise in the Barnets Sea and Storfjorden. The cruise gives students a unique opportunity to learn about instrumentation, practical field experiments with data collection and data handling. The students were selected from the partner institutions (UiB GEO,  UiB IFT, UiB GFI, HVL), with backgrounds such as in oceanography, ocean acoustics, ocean optics, seismology, other geosciences including instrumentation and data. 

Topics of the summer school include:

1. Oceanography - measurements with CTD and water samples: Instructor: Eva Falck (UNIS) and Espen Storheim (NERSC). Lecture about the oceanography in the Storfjorden region. Lecture about the instruments (Espen), the measurements, processing and analysis tools. Carry out CTD measurements and analysis of the data. The data will be uploaded to a data repository with associated metadata, preferable to the Norwegian Marine Data Center (NMDC).
2. Passive acoustics - measurements and data processing. Instructors: Espen Storheim (NERSC) and Kjell Eivind Frøysa (HVL). Some background about the acoustics in the Barents Sea region. Some about the instruments, the measurements, experiment, processing and analysis tools. The Activity should lead to quality checked data at level 1, associated metadata. This should go into predefined data format from NERSC following guideline from IQOE.
3. Marine optics - measurements of light in water. Instructor: Håkon Sandven (UiB IPT). Lectures about background marine optics, why it is important, how to collect data. And analyse data. Practical exercise in Barents Sea region using instruments, carry out measurement experiments, processing data and using analysis tools.
4. Seismology - measurements of earthquakes from Ocean Bottom Seismometers. Instructor: Zeinab Jeddi, UiB-GEO
5. Data processing and data curation of data collected in the four topics described above. Focus on preparing metadata for all the collected data using pre-defined templates. Instructors: Peter Pulsifer (U Colorado), Torill Hamre and Frode Monsen (NERSC).

Outcome of the research school

Lectures will be available on the UAK website and the INTAROS website.

The students will prepare a report with description of the experiments, data collection, data management and scientific importance.

The following instructors are contributing to the Research School:

Hanne Sagen, NERSC,
Espen Storheim, NERSC,
Kjell Eivind Frøysa, HVL,
Håkon Sandven, UIB – IFT,
Tristan Petit, UIB – IFT,
Zeinab Jeddi, UiB – GEO,
Felix Halpaap, UiB – GEO.

The research school is led by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center under the project Useful Arctic Knowledge: partnership for research and education (UAK) funded by the INTPART programme 2018-2020 under contract no 274891. INTPART (International partnerships for excellent education, research and innovation) is funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education. The project, which includes partners from Norway, USA and Canada, brings together leading researchers, educators and young scientists working on selected Arctic science topics. The research school is also part of the H2020 project INTAROS – Integrated Arctic Observation System, contract no 727890.  

KV Svalbard icebreaker from the Norwegian Coast Guard. The photo is from a scientific cruise in the Fram Strait in 2016 (Photo: Håkon Kjøllmoen)