Field mission in Abisko – July 2022

On July 2022 a field mission to Abisko Research Station in Northern Sweden has been done. The goals were to produce a new vegetation map for Stordalen and Mielajokka catchments (see the previous HiPerBorea field mission in Abisko) based on satelite data (Auda et al., in prep) and to sample sphagnum mosses from the peatlands of this area in order to do quantitative estimation of there thermo-hydrological properties (Cazaurang et al., 2022, under review). The HiPerBorea team included Yves Auda (GET), Simon Cazaurang (IMFT) and Laurent Orgogozo (GET). On the field we benefited from the guidance of Jonas Gustafsson (Umeå University), many thanks to him for his crucial inputs ! Thanks also to Reiner Giesler (Umeå University), Erik Lundin (Swedish Polar Research Secretariat) and Emily Pedersen (Swedish Polar Research Secretariat) for their help.

We digitalized representative areas for the main land cover types, such as birch forest, heath and wetlands.

Interestingly we identified high elevation open water surfaces on the highest part of our trail, in the Miellajokka catchment.

Undisturbed samples of Sphagnum mosses were also done in the peatlands of Stordalen.