LOMROG II – Lomonosov Ridge off Greenland

The LOMROG II expedition will be carried out in the summer of 2009 by the Danish Continental Shelf Project in cooperation with the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat and the Swedish Maritime Administration. The Swedish icebreaker Oden will serve as the research platform, while the actual research areas will be selected based on the prevailing ice situation, particularly in the area around the North Pole.

Nearly impenetrable ice

The expedition is a follow-up to LOMROG, which was conducted in 2007. During LOMROG, data were gathered from the areas north of Greenland, between 83 and 87°N, where no surface-going vessel had ever been before. The researchers were particularly interested in the Lomonosov Ridge, a mountain ridge on the ocean floor. To break through the nearly impenetrable icepack, Oden was assisted by one of the world's most powerful icebreakers, the Russian 50 Let Pobedy.

This year Oden will operate without the assistance of another icebreaker. The expedition will focus on the areas around the North Pole, although the area northeast of Greenland may also be included.

The Continental Shelf Project

The Danish researchers will work mainly on the Continental Shelf Project, which is affiliated with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) regarding national claims to the ocean floor. Using advanced multi-beam 3D echo sounding, seismology, and water and sediment samples, the researchers will gather information about the appearance and structure of the ocean floor. A group of marine geologists from Stockholm University will also take part in the Danish project.

Swedish projects

Swedish researchers will also be working onboard on research projects in the fields of animal ecology and marine geology.

Cyclops, arrow worms, and krill will be studied in a project entitled "Carnivorous Zooplankton – Their Role in Arctic Food Webs". This research will contribute to an understanding of the ocean's ecosystem and, in particular, the function of the free water mass in the polar region. A deeper understanding of how the ocean's ecosystems work is essential to our ability to use ocean resources in a sustainable manner.

A sequence of sediment cores will be collected from the slope of the Lomonosov Ridge as part of a project called "Reconstructing Central Arctic Ocean Paleoceanography Using Sediment Cores from the Lomonosov Ridge". The sediment cores could provide answers to questions about how the dynamics of the inland ice sheets have affected the global climate.

Schedule

31 July–10 September 2009.

The expedition will begin and end at Longyearbyen in Svalbard.

To the Top

Print

• SWEDARCTIC
• Kinnvika
• LOMROG II
• Other Projects