Monthly archives: June 2020
Even though my internship was technically over I still had a few hours left over due to time lost due to COVID. Over the past month I have been doing little bits and pieces for bioCEED as my time comes to an end. I have been helping out with overseeing surveys, advising improvements for the bioCEED website homepage, wrapping up my work on the learning arctic biology worksite to pass the work back to Eike (who was originally working on the website), writing species descriptions for the field guide and I’m general wrapping things up. It has been a nice […]
The past 6 months have absolutely flown by. Unfortunately, this means my time at bioCEED has come to an end. Over the past 2 months I have settled back into “normal” life back in Australia. My work within bioCEED has been focusing on getting microbiology and lichen ready to be published. This has involved proof-reading, editing and coordinating with the authors of those sections. The past 2 months has involved a lot of web development. I have pretty much no experience in this department. Most of the web development revolved around simplifying and tidying up the old website as many […]
Gaining new knowledge I have really enjoyed my stay in Longyearbyen and working at Polar Permaculture. I have gotten to use some of my biological knowledge, mostly through trying to maintain good growth in the plants we were growing and when doing my small-scale water quality experiment on basil plants. I got to use my skills in plant biology, and I got to use and improve my skills in doing research, finding the best and most reliable sources for information, and also using less time on doing so. I have made a report on optimal growing conditions for the plants […]
When I arrived in Longyearbyen my expectations for the internship were quite high. I thought the internship would give me a lot of practical skills that would help me sort out which part of research I liked before starting my master degree in the fall. I was looking forward to helping out collecting and processing samples, learning more about how to run research projects in remote places and arctic conditions, maintaining lab and field equipment, and to utilize as many machines, instruments and methods in the lab as possible. The lab activity in January is less intensive than in the […]
The past few weeks have been spent getting an overview of the remaining tasks and how to complete these within the allocated timeframe. Unfortunately, there have been a few changes due to Corona and the sampling event scheduled in May has had to be postponed mostly because of planning, social distancing and quarantine restrictions. Participating in the sampling would have been an excellent opportunity to utilize and expand classroom-taught biological knowledge, however the theoretical skills gained throughout the internship process have most likely been just as useful. These include learning about the fjord systems in Svalbard, how anthropogenic impact influence […]