Author: Kerstin Schepanski

According to wikipedia, “quicksand forms in saturated loose sand when the sand is suddenly agitated. When water in the sand cannot escape, it creates a liquefied soil that loses strength and cannot support weight.”

That’s clearly a statement we can confirm now.

It hit us hard on our early morning tour following the Gæsavatnaleið to the upper Flæður region visiting our mobile OPC stations. The batteries running the station need to be changed every second day in order to keep the system a live. On our way, we have to cross the river bed four times. So far, each crossing was ok, although sometimes tricky and bumpy. Despite the need for getting up early, morning crossings come with the advantage that the glacier melt water discharge which feeds the river is at a minimum. So the chances for a dry river bed and thus a somewhat smooth crossing is highest before noon.

This morning, at one spot in the middle of the river bed, the surface looked somewhat suspicious. And not longer than a blink of an eye later all four wheels got sucked into the ground. Realizing pretty soon that we have no chance to get out on our own, we asked the Search & Rescue team based at the Dreki campsite for help.

The story comes with a happy end and about one hour later the car was back on its own feet and we could continue with our morning routine. All batteries were changed in time this morning 🙂  

Walking in the desert can be an experience. Driving in the desert, too. We very much enjoy the experience here, and also some of the challenges we are facing every day. But having two seriously broken cars at the same time and only one car left driving 10 people in different directions to fulfill their duties is a challenge we would have liked to avoid. 

Ever heard of a malfunctioning exhaust recycling valve? Or a broken leaf spring which meant to carry the car’s weight and held the wheel axle in place? We do more than dust research out here …

We are ready. The dust sources are getting ready. When will the wind finally arrive? Here it comes! Finally, we saw dust being actively emitted from exactly these spots we thought it will be emitted. It’s a relief. 

However, although dust-wise we are heading towards the right direction, this blog post comes with a “but”. Paradise is still somewhat wet. Not seriously flooded, nor soaked wet, but wet enough preventing the top soil layer from drying up quickly (maybe we are a bit impatient, though). Looks like Paradise is not ready yet for the “perfect” dust event. “Be patient, it will blow soon” are the words of the day. On the other side, we had an extra day for calibration and mounting additional instruments. “Making the best out of it” is another set of words shared frequently. The weather forecast looks promising for the next days, so we expect blowing dust in Paradise somewhat soon.

In order to better understand how dust suspended in the atmosphere is dispersed, we use mobile optical particle counters (OPCs). Mobile implies a kind of a mobility in the sense that they can be easily transported by car or in a backpack, which is extremely helpful when mounting them in rugged terrain somewhere and nowhere – as on Dyngjusandur. In a nutshell, the OPC is a device that sucks in some air and optically counts particles suspended in that air volume. Combined with some meteorological parameters measured at the site as well, we are able to infer information on the path dust plumes travel through the atmosphere eventually leaving the Dyngjusandur source area towards the north.

During the last days, we mounted the first OPCs in the Dyngjusandur area mainly in the middle and lower part. And they already provided us with some first data! Nevertheless there are still some failures we have to figure out. A healthy mix of hiking, walking and driving brought us to 10 out of the 20 locations we identified for the OPCs. At some sites it was quite challenging to strap the tripods on which the OPCs are mounted to the ground. The soil was as diverse as the weather: from rocks to pebbles to sand, from sunshine to drizzle to showers. However, looking back, I think we found some quite creative ways to tie the tripod. Fingers crossed, all tripods (and poles “drilled” into the soil) will stand high wind speeds we expect to see at some point.

How to ship two tons of equipment into a desert? There are some great guys doing that, and we are quite happy that our boxes made it safely to Dreki today. Many thanks to Villi and his team! We now feel ready for having the campaign starting soon – “just” need to decide on the final ground zero …. but that’s what we will sort out during the next days.

Just the moment when Carlos, Konrad and Kerstin have unloaded the trailers, rain starts pouring down – enough to be soaking wet (persons and cardboard box) in a minute. Welcome to the desert!

After finishing playing Tetris with the boxes in the container, and having a brief lunch break, the crowd arrived from Akureyri. The most pressing question now is: setting up the tents before, during, or after the rain? In the end, after the rain is before the rain … But in the end, everything worked out … except … well, sleeping bag apparently didn’t made it to Dreki! What next? Carlos and Konrad decided on very short notice to go back towards Möðrudalur with Villi meeting half way. Thanks again! Rice and camping-ratatouille finishes the day.

Did you ever wonder how odd names make their way onto maps?

Yesterday Adolfo, Andres, Angesh, Cristina, and Xavier arrived in Keflavík and are currently on their way to the north. We are looking forward to welcoming them here in Dreki on Monday!

One very important task is still open: Doing the shopping for the outback! Equipped with a (super) long shopping list, the group currently staying in Akureyri is now doing the grocery: Feeding 10+ people for 10+ days some where in the desert …

Will there be an answer in the end? Does the perfect dust spot exist? These are the main questions keeping our minds busy since the last three days. Although the Dyngjusandur area has seen quite a lot of dust and sand storms earlier in July, large parts are flooded or wet at least since we arrived end of July. We literarily can see how these spots will emit dust once dried up and wind is blowing, but when and where will this start? Having eventually identified four potential dust spots for our main measurement site (in-officially named “paradise”, “pond”, “shore”, and “island”), we now visit all places again and again at different times of the day ultimately trying to anticipate how the interplay between water, sediment deposition, crust forming and dust emission will work. It’s a challenge as the decision on the location of the main measurement site is key to the entire campaign. However, it’s a challenge we are ready to take – and to be honest, it’s exciting!

Regularly flooded or staying dry? This is one of the key questions that need to be answered before defining the spot for the main measurement site. The flood, caused by the glacier melt water discharge, occurs in the afternoon and evening. To see if, where, and how deep and how often the area will be flooded, we briefly considered staying in the source area the entire night, but eventually decided on mounting one of our OPC devices which has a camera. Hopefully, this will help us getting towards a decision on where the main measurement site will be mounted in the next days!

Besides the main measurement site, we will have smaller measurement sites scattered around the main site aiming at reflecting the conditions over a larger area. While exploring the area and visiting potential dust hotspots, we also check for potential locations where additional measurement devices shall be mounted. Eventually, we were able to identify them over the last few days.

Eventually, the second bunch of people (Carlos, Martina and Kerstin) has arrived in Keflavík and the group made their way up to Dreki in the Highlands.  And, yes, of course we took the chance to visit Fagradalshraun on our way to Akureyri. It still shows some eruptive respective emissive activity – even from safe distance quite impressive!

Via Akureyri and a visit at Möðrudalur seeing Villi and Elli (and our equipment which is kindly stored on their premise), we drove up to Drekagil, which shall be our base camp until mid-September. We were warmly welcomed by the camp site wardens and the national park rangers and we are looking forward to our stay here in Dreki –  our hub to the dust sources located in the Dyngjusandur area.