My senior year, I wrote my thesis on greenhouse gasses and human impacts on the Drakes Island salt marsh in Wells, Maine. I also had the opportunity to take a five-week field work course on the Norwegian island of Svalbard with one of my Bates professors. This trip helped me to realize my love of the Arctic, and I decided I needed to find my way back.
While searching for opportunities for what I wanted to do after graduation, I came across the Fulbright program. Fulbright is an awesome organization that sends Americans abroad and brings international students and scholars to the United States. There are a lot of different types of Fulbright scholarships, but I decided to apply for a research grant to Norway. My project involves investigating greenhouse gas emissions (mainly methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas) from glacial and permafrost landscapes in Svalbard.
My Fulbright started in July, and it’s been great so far! I first spent three months doing field work on Svalbard. I went out to a bunch of different research sites all over the island to make observations and collect samples. I walked on glaciers, sailed through fjords, and fell into icy rivers. The days were tough but incredibly fun. Fun fact about Svalbard in the summer: the sun never sets so it's bright out all day and night!
Since October, I have been living in Tromsø, Norway. Tromsø is a city in the Arctic circle, so it’s very cold but very beautiful. In the winter, the sun never comes over the horizon so it's pretty dark too. In Tromsø, I’m working for a research group in the geosciences department at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway.
