GLACIER BIOGEOCHEMISTRY

I saw my first glacier in Iceland in 1973 on a school field trip. It was the ice cap on top of Snaefell in Iceland - in literature, it is the start of the Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which, with the benefit of hindsight, seems more prophetic than I imagined at the time (Fig. 1.1). The next year, I had the chance to visit Chamonix, a place that plays an important role in the early annals of glaciology and is site of some of the earliest in situ subglacial science - in the tunnel beneath the Glacier d'Argentiere. On that visit, I got to explore along the margins of the Glacier des Bossons (Fig. 1.2), and I think I was hooked from that point on.