Iceland Adventure Part 4: To the Snaefellsnes Peninsula

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“We hug the earth – how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more.” Henry David Thoreau in Excursions.

 

For our final weekend in Iceland, we traveled to the Snaefellesnes Peninsula, which is a 2-hour drive north of Reykjavik. It is sometimes described as “Iceland in Miniature,” due to the concentration of dramatic landscape features including:

Video 1: A volcano and lava fields leading to spectacular sea cliffs. 

 

Photo 1: Lava rocks are covered with a golden moss.

Video 2:  Numerous seabirds are found on the cliffs, beaches, and dunes.

 

Photo 2: Waves crashing against the sea cliffs.

Photo 3: Dramatic rock formations are found along the coast, such as this rock arch. 

Photo 4: Black sand beaches run for miles in places.

 

 

Iceland Adventure Part 3: Field Trips

 By Richard B. Primack

“Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

During the conservation biology course at the University of Iceland, we took three afternoon field trips to supplement our classroom work:

Photo 1: On Monday, Jose Alves and Tómas Grétar Gunnarsson showed us their long-term shore bird study in a coastal estuary. 

Photo 2: On Tuesday, the class visited the Reykjavik Botanical Garden. 

Photo 3: Rock gardens were a particular strength.

 

Photo 4: The plant beds were built from stones cut by hand as part of a make-work project during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Photo 5: On Thursday. Mariana Lucia Tamayo and her students gave us a tour of urban ecology and birds on the University of Iceland campus.

 

 

 

Iceland Adventure Part 2: Teaching

 By Richard B. Primack

“How to live – How to get the most life as if you were to teach the young hunter how to entrap his game. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

From May 27-31 this year, I was a Visiting Professor at the University of Iceland teaching a short course in conservation biology for 14 students, a mix of Master’s students and recent grads now working for government conservation agencies. About half were Icelandic and the other half from elsewhere in the world.  

Mornings consisted of short lectures, student presentations, short guest lectures by leading Icelandic conservation biologists, and conversations about papers from the current literature. Students also attended a PhD defense on the population biology of shorebirds in Iceland.

Here are four of the guest lecturers:

Photo 1: Ingibjörg Svala Jónsdóttir carries out long term research on how climate change affects the Icelandic tundra.

Photo 2: Jose Alves described an international effort to investigate and protect migratory shorebirds.

 

Photo 3: Snæbjörn Pálsson investigates the conservation genetics and evolution of animals in Iceland. 

 

Photo 4: Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir assesses the value of Iceland’s nature and landscape. 

As I will describe in the next post, we also went on afternoon field trips.

Iceland Adventure Part 1

 By Richard B. Primack

“How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us!” Henry David Thoreau in Excursions.

From May 24 to June 2, we traveled to Iceland. The purpose of the trip was to teach a short course in conservation biology, with weekends before and after reserved for sightseeing and learning about conservation and national park issues in Iceland.  

During our first weekend, we traveled the Golden Circle, a wonderful circular route to the east of Reykjavik that includes many amazing geological features. One of the most surprising features of the trip was constantly contending with strong gusts of wind. As a result, people in Iceland tend to avoid umbrellas and baseball caps. 

Among the most notable features:

Video 1: The Geothermal Park of bubbling pools and geysers, including a small geothermal power plant. 

 

Video 2: The Secret Lagoon where people swim in a pool heated with geothermal water.

 

Video 3: Geysir National Park featuring a geyser that shoots up hot water about every five minutes and is extremely variable in its height and form. Tourism to the area depends on this one geyser; what will happen if it becomes inactive, as has happened to other geysers after past earthquakes? 

 

Video 4. Gullfoss Waterfall with torrents of water changing direction and plunging into a deep gorge. This amazing natural feature would have been destroyed if citizens of Iceland had not stopped a proposed hydropower plan. 

 

Photo 1: Thingvellir National Park has dramatic fissures where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart.

Photo 2: At Thingvellir, Ingibjörg Svala Jónsdóttir showed us her long-term open-top chamber warming experiments. 

 

Climate Change Puts Wildflowers at Risk

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“Science is always brave, for to know, is to know good; doubt and danger quail before her eye.” Henry David Thoreau in Excursions.

 

 

 

 

25 Rules for Research Professors

 By Richard B. Primack

 

“In the long run [people] hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aid at something high.” Henry David Thoreau in Walden.

 

I recently published a list of 25 “rules of conduct”—guidelines that have contributed to my academic longevity, successes, and satisfaction during my 45-year career. 

I recognize that some of these rules reflect my particular discipline and experience, but I believe most of them are widely applicable. 

Perhaps the most important one is to spend time doing what you love; it will help prevent burnout. I am a botanist and love plants, so from March to October I spend time outside every day studying and enjoying plants. Keeping in touch with what you value can help sustain you over the long haul of your career. 

Figure 1: These rules are like the steps on a staircase helping you reach greater success.

Also important is “The Golden Rule of being a professor.” Treat students the way you would like professors to treat someone in your family or how you wish you had been treated when you were a student. 

And a third central rule is to keep in regular touch with colleagues and spend time talking with people, including younger colleagues. And by that, I mean broadly—in your department, other departments, and the university administration, at other institutions, and at professional meetings and seminars. This is a valuable way to grow your research network and gain new information and insights. 

I hope these will help you on your career journey as they have helped me. 

Here is a link to the article with all 25 rules: LINK