Winters under Pressure: Life in a Changing Cold Environment
Multidisciplinary winter field course for PhD researchers and Master students
Date: 22 February – 1 March 2026 (effective course dates 23 Feb – 1 March)
Location: Oulanka Research Station, Finland
This multidisciplinary course will form an introduction to a wide range of topics related to biotic and abiotic processes which in different ways are active during winter in northern terrestrial and freshwater environments. Snow is the main component of the northern winters, and we will be measuring the snowpack properties and the applicability of stable water isotopes to understand snowpack metamorphism. We will be studying microbial activity in streams, soil, and groundwater, below the snow and ice. The microbial activity is linked to greenhouse gas (CO2 and CH4) exchange between the ecosystems and the atmosphere, and the students are introduced to measurements of these activities and gas exchange as well as the role of vegetation in these processes. All topics will be explored through the lens of ongoing climate change, with a particular focus on warming winters, increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and episodic thaw-freeze cycles occurring even in mid-winter.
The course is a mixture of lectures and excursions which will end with group-based project work where the students get exposed to working in the field under challenging winter conditions and present their own results based on the data collected during the course. Provided attending the course teaching and successful delivery of the course project and assignment, students can be awarded 5 ECTS study credits.The Winter School is part of the CryoSCOPE project and coordinated by the University of Oulu Water Energy and Environmental Engineering and the Ecology and Genetics research units, and in collaboration with Aarhus University, Denmark.
