What makes Svalbard such a good research site?
HA: Within a fairly limited area you have access to all sorts of geology. It’s a fantastic classroom for any type of geology. And because it’s in the High Arctic, there’s no vegetation. There’s lots of fjords, so you have access to all the sites by ship. It’s comparable to Antarctica in terms of conditions and geology but it’s much cheaper to operate. I’ve been doing field work on Svalbard for the past 25 years, on and off, and I know the area very well and how to operate there. We’ve worked four or five different areas, some of them dealing with different aspects of the Alan Hills carbonate story. We’ve been looking at blueberry (hematite) concretion analogs, old stromatolites, red beds, fluvial sediments, different things that are relevant for Mars research and astrobiology in general. AM: Where exactly is Svalbard? HA: It’s directly north of Norway, 80 degrees north, way north of the Arctic Circle. It’s governed by the Svalbard Treaty, which was set down in 1920 and states that Sval
