80% of Greenland is covered by a massive sheet of ice, more than two miles thick in places. The ice is constantly moving and flowing toward the ocean through glacial fjords. At its edges, where it meets the cold waters of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, productive marine ecosystems support abundant wildlife and coastal communities.
But those systems are changing. For four consecutive Augusts, a team of American and Greenlandic researchers, including scientists from Bigelow Laboratory, has traveled to Greenland to investigate how warming waters and sea ice melt are reshaping interconnected marine communities — from phytoplankton to humans.
They recently returned from their final cruise, during which they sailed to Greenland’s remote west coast to collect a suite of physical, chemical, and biological data.
