Project Report

Overseas Fellowship Program Participant: FY2022 First Call Short-Term Program
Yefan Wang (Hokkaido University)

I participated in the GRISO Summer School 2022 in Nuuk, Greenland from July 11 to July 22, 2022, supported by the ArCS II Overseas Fellowship Program. The summer school is hosted by GRISO (Greenland Ice Sheet Ocean Science Network), an international, open network of scientists interested in working together to address the large, complex questions associated with recent changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet. The topic of the summer school is “Impacts of glacier retreat on Greenland’s coastal margins”, which is very relevant to my current research. The summer school offers me a great opportunity to deeply understand the impacts of glacier retreat on Greenland’s coastal margins.

The activities of the summer school are mainly carried out at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (GINR). During the first week, I mainly listened to science lectures connected to the focus topic (Impacts of glacier retreat on Greenland’s coastal margins), including glaciology, oceanography, and ecosystem given by the hosting faculties. These science lectures gave me a chance to get close to the famous scientists that I could only see in papers before and deeply made me aware of the importance to focus on the environmental change on Greenland’s coastal margins. Besides the science lectures, I also took part in the activities organized by Knowinnovation which focus on important collaboration and group skills. Of course, I briefly introduced my own research and discussed it with other participants and lecturers. Week 1 also included a half-day field trip to Kobbefjord Research Station, during which, the researchers introduced their ongoing research and led us to visit their observation field.

During the second week, due to the group infection of COVID-19, we had to change all activities online. Even so, we had plenty of activities. The local researcher from GINR introduced the current research in GINR, and a researcher from the University of Greenland gave us a lecture about education in Greenland, giving me an insight into the current lack of high education facilities that I never knew before. Besides the lecture, we were divided into 3 groups and dug into group projects. I was in a group with 3 Ph.D. students from America and Belgium, and we decided to focus on Greenland halibut in our group project. Through several days of data analysis and discussion, we made a short presentation with the title of “The Greenland halibut (habitat): current and future evolution in Upernavik icefjord” on the last day of the summer school. Of course, we had a lively discussion with other participants and lecturers as well.

Through summer school, I learned about the state of science and research techniques pertaining to Greenland’s ice sheet and ocean margins and got knowledge of the research topic beyond my research interests. What is more important, I met people with different research/cultural backgrounds and have a chance to learn from other participants and exchange ideas with them. Such interaction may inspire me to have more ideas in future research and facilitate potential collaboration.