Zackenberg Research Station is extending its facilities again Extensive marine activities at Zackenberg Research Station has since 1994 been carried out from very primitive facilities in Daneborg, c. 20 km south of Zackenberg. In 2006 Aage V. Jensen Charity Foundation made means available for construction of a 144 m2 house for winter storage of boats and a small laboratory. However, accommodation was still in a nearby abandoned weather station, ‘Kystens Perle’ (‘Pearl of the Coast’), which originally and until 1975 was used for accommodation of staff from a local weather station. The conditions of this house was even from the beginning very bad, and despite several attempts to renovate the house its conditions has become worse and worse during the last years, mainly due to permafrost penetrating its basement. In 2008, it was finally decided that the house was not appropriate for accommodation, and the scientists moved out of the house to sleep either in tents or among the boats in the building from 2006.
During the same period there has been an increased interest for carrying through marine investigations in the region. This is partly due to an increased interest among international scientists to be involved in the activities at Zackenberg Research Station and partly due to Greenlandic and Danish scientists having the same interests.
Accordingly, Aage V. Jensen Charity Foundation decided early in 2010 to donate 5 million Danish kroner for construction of a 154 m2 house to accommodate up to ten scientists. The house will contain five double rooms, a combined dinning and living room, modern laboratory facilities and storage facilities for provision and scientific equipment. The construction of the building has already started at a small entrepreneur, Venslev Tømrer and Snedker Entrepriser, in Denmark. In July the different parts for the house will be transported by ship to Northeast Greenland where the house will be assembled during a short and intensive campaign in the last three weeks of August.
Also the main station at Zackenberg extends its facilities in 2010. A storage facility for scientific and logistics equipment has for long time been on the list of wishes, and early in 2010 Aarhus Univeristy made means available for a 50 m2 storage facility. This house will also be assembled in August 2010 by the same entrepreneur who also constructs the new building in Daneborg.
