While most biologists relish field studies, computer scientists are more known to spend long hours indoors, logged on the Internet, eating pizza. What happens when computer scientists and biologists team up to deploy an advanced monitoring system in the arctic? No pizza, no Internet, and beautiful, unpredictable nature — how does a computer scientist cope in the arctic? This is the story of the MANA diary, which gathered the impressions of an outsider during a 10 days stay at Zackenberg, Greenland, last August: from the logistics problems, the encounter with a polar bear, or outdoors volleyball to the amazing sight of a three-mast.



MANA is a project funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council. The goal is to improve the technology used for monitoring lakes in the arctic. More specifically, the goal is to move from manual measurements where a biologist takes a sample from the lake and analyzes it manually to a system that automatically measure chlorophyll, salinity and dissolved oxygen 4 times a day. Such a system will allow to gather measurements all year long (not just in the months where researchers can access the lake), at a much finer time granularity (so that it is possible to trace the impact of interesting events such as storm).

We will gather the first results when we go back to Zackenberg from October 20 to October 31, 2008. You can follow our progress at the MANA diary.