s determination of mechanisms of fluvial transport and sediment supply to Arctic gravel-bed river channels. The mechanisms reflect the processes of adaptation of proglacial rivers of the Arctic zone to changing environmental conditions, and indicate the dominant directions of transformations of paraglacial geosystems of various importance. For studies on Arctic geosystems, the region of the south Bellsund (SW Spitsbergen) was selected due to extensive knowledge on its hydro-meteorological and glacial-geomorphological conditions, and long-term measurement series carried out by the research station of the MCSU, among others within the framework of the international monitoring network: SEDIBUD (IAG) and Small-CATCHMENT program. For detailed studies, rivers with various hydrological regimes were selected, functioning at the forefield of the Scott and Renard Glaciers. The Scott River glacial catchment and glacier-free catchments of the Reindeer Stream and the Wydrzyca Stream (with a snow-permafrost hydrological regime) meet the selection criteria for representative test catchments analyzed for the following programs: SEDIFLUX, SEDIBUD, and POP.
Geochemical mapping project based on multimaterial and -elemental method covering the NW Russia and adjacent areas of Finland and Norway. NW-Russia is of strategic importance not only for Europe but also for the sosio-economic development of the whole Russia for its richness in natural resources. Their use must be based on environmentally acceptable principles. In addition, within the area exist numerous industrial centres whose environmental impacts are unknown. The information produced by the project is significant for the future development of the area and remedial measures of the environment. The project lead by the applicant, will be carried out in 1999-2003 in cooperation with Russian and Norwegian partners.
The polar ionosphere is sensible to the enhancement of the electromagnetic radiation and energetic particles coming from the Sun expecially around a maximum of solar activity . Some typical phenomena can occur such as, among the others, geomagnetic storms, sub-storms and ionospheric irregularities. In this frame the high latitude ionosphere may become highly turbulent showing the presence of small-scale (from centimetres to meters) structures or irregularities imbedded in the large-scale (tens of kilometers) ambient ionosphere. These irregularities produce short term phase and amplitude fluctuations in the carrier of the radio waves which pass through them. These effects are commonly called Amplitude and Phase Ionospheric Scintillations that can affect the reliability of GPS navigational systems and satellite communications. The goal of this proposal is to contribute to the understanding of the physical mechanisms responsible of the ionospheric scintillations as well as to data collecting for nowcasting/forecasting purposes at high latitude. As the scarceness of polar observations, the specific site near Ny-Ålesund is of particular experimental interest.
Mapping and monitoring of the snow cover with use of satellitte born optical instruments for (1) direct use of observations of climate change and (2) use of observations in climate modelling. Measurements of the snows spectral reflectance and other physical properties.
The project will provide a long-term, pseudo-global validation support to the ENVISAT-1 atmospheric measurements, based on mutually consistent high-quality solar and lunar observations from FTIR spectrometers operated at primary and a number of complementary NDSC stations. The validation is limited to a number of target species, most of which are primary NRT or OL level-2 products of the mission, with focus on NOy components: O3, NO2, NO, N2O, HNO3, HNO4, H2CO, CO and CH4. Synergistic use will be made of column and profile data from MIPAS, GOMOS and SCIAMACHY. The ground network will deliver mean vertical column abundances for all target species with NDSC-type quality, and height profile information for some target gases as secondary products to the PI's home i