Hanna Machejek is one of the beneficiaries of the competition for funding student and PhD candidates mobility within the HarSval project. She received 17810 PLN funding for the specialized course: AG – 853 Artic Terrestrial and Marine Climate History at the The University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen.

Enjoy reading her report below:

“As part of the HarSval competition, I received funding that allowed me to participate in the specialist course AG-353 Arctic Marine and Terrestrial Climate History, held at UNIS (The University Centre in Svalbard) in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. During the 6-week course, I expanded both my theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of studying climate change in the Arctic.
The course began with a 3-day safety training preparing to work in extreme terrain, which included boat operations training, polar bear safety, navigation, and first aid. In the following weeks, I attended lectures, seminars, laboratory, and fieldwork dedicated to methods of studying climate change in marine and terrestrial environments.
During the laboratory sessions, I learned how to describe marine cores, prepare samples for micropaleontological analyses, work with a microscope, and identify foraminifera. Additionally, the classes included age modeling based on radiocarbon dates using C2 software and working with Ocean Data Viewer.
The lectures and seminars covered topics such as micropaleontology, sediment dating methods, stable oxygen and carbon isotopes.
The culmination of the course was a research cruise on the RV Helmer Hanssen to the Woodfjorden fjord (northern Svalbard), where I had the opportunity to learn how to collect gravity cores, box cores, and also lake cores.”