GreenFjord project the focus of researchers’ efforts over the summer

Julia Schmale aboard the Adolf-Jensen ship, 5 August 2023. EERL / EPFL - GreenFjord is a four-year research program intended to investigate how climate change is affecting ecosystems in southern Greenland. The scientists just completed a first intensive field season where they won over the local residents. The next step will be to analyze the millions of datapoints they collected. Julia Schmale is no stranger to harsh research environments. She spent significant time in the past ten years either working in a lab on an uninhabited Sub-Antarctic island with polar ocean as far as the eye could see, or on icebreakers as they drifted with Arctic sea ice, always far away from humans settlements. That changed in 2022 when she formed a consortium of experts of a research program called "GreenFjord", led the proposal writing and then won the competition of the Swiss Polar Institute, which appointed her to direct one of its four-year flagship projects.