ARISE in Antarctica

...and two years later, one of my post ice projects

2010-04-08T22:00:00.003+12:00

This video was created as a result of my ARISE project proposal, to show the science of ANDRILL through artistic expression. I hope you enjoy it.

And we all roll merrily on...

2008-05-01T04:29:00.008+12:00

Leaving the ice wasn't and isn't the end of the ANDRILL project, or the SMS scientific effort. It is only the beginning of years of work based on this core and the other information collected in our intense 2-3 months on the ice.

Much of the team is meeting again this week here in Tallahassee, Florida at the university to review what progress each of the discipline teams have made in analyzing their samples, visit the core again (like a long lost friend), select additional samples to be taken from the other side of the working 1/2 of the core, the one we didn't touch while on-ice, and to make plans for future collaborations, meetings, and drill hole proposals. The heat,

humidity, trees and insects make it a very different environment

than where we saw each other last.

The primary reason we are meeting here is that Florida State University houses the Antarctic Core Library. Every sediment core that has been drilled in Antarctica (remember there aren't that many) is stored here in a climate controlled room. We suited up in heavy coats and suits to go in to take a look.

Looking at innocuous rows of shelves and boxes, it felt a little like I was peering into the government warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie - who knows what is in each box!? Only I do know. I know what the depth numbers mean, I recognize the acronyms of the projects and know where each one was taken from. I know exactly how much trouble, sweat, teamwork, and expertise each box represents. And I know what kind of

information we can learn from them.

Thanks ANDRILL! Your big picture vision of a multi-national, interdisciplinary team has made an incredible difference to me, the other ARISE educators, and everyone we have had a chance to share the experience with!

Curious George and the Penguins

2007-12-14T13:38:00.007+13:00

I last left George back at the dorm with the instructions, "Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone." Unusually enough for George, he has stayed out of trouble! Such a well behaved little monkey.

As a reward, I arranged for him to visit the local Cape Royds Adelie penguin colony with a friend of mine, Jean Pennycook. She works with Dr. David Ainley monitorin g the long-term effects of changing climate on the penguin colony. Her trip there was delayed until after I left the ice, so George will stay with her for awhile, then come back to New Zealand with some of ANDRILL's scientists who live in Christchurch where I can pick him up before heading back home to Alaska!

When I got to see the photos from George's trip, I was amazed to see how friendly the Adelies were to George. I'm glad he decided to come back home with me rather than stay with the penguins. It is probably because he doesn't like to eat fish!

It certainly looks like they had fun! Huge thanks to Jean, Louise, and Kari for introducing George around and taking his picture for me. Thanks to everyone who sent comments and requests for places for George to visit on this trip.

So Hard to Say Goodbye!

2007-12-12T11:42:00.000+13:00

I think this is the most difficult blog I've had to write yet. Why, you ask? I have to tell you about leaving when I'm not sure I was quite ready to leave. While Louise and Reiner were out with the penguin colony the rest of the ARISE team was packing and saying our farewells. Robin and I managed to sneak in a hiking trip to the top of Observation Hill. It rises a little over 900 feet above McMurdo Station and is one of the few places in town that usually has a tremendous view of Mt. Erebus. Much to my dismay, the day we climbed "Ob Hill" was one of the days that the volcano was socked in with clouds. But it's still a great view from the top! Kate has been busy writing an Ob Hill Trail field guide for us all to use- too bad we didn't get to test it out that day, but I'm anxious to have a look at it.

Most of the day on Monday was spent collecting all of our belongings, doing the last loads of laundry and packing all but the clothes on our backs and ECW gear into suitcases and orange duffel bags. The process for leaving Antarctica is the reverse of arrival. Everyone has to wear ECW gear on the plane and are only allowed one small bag to carry on, everything else has to be checked in ahead of time and loaded on as cargo. The day before scheduled flights back to McMurdo everyone has to bring checked luggage to the transport office during "Bag Drag". All checked items must weigh less than 75 pounds and be left there overnight. Robin, Joanna, Bob, Ken, Graziano and I had to report for Bag Drag at 8pm that Monday evening. Fortunately I had mailed home four boxes of books and gift items I bought for family members so all of my remaining gear weighed in at 68 pounds. Everyone in ECW gear and carry-on items also had to be weighed. I had my big red pockets stuffed with fruit for the flight back, along with a couple of books. My carryon bag contained my laptop, two cameras, a dozen rolls of film, my jeans, a couple pairs of shoes, sunglasses and a bottle of water. I stepped on the scale with all of that and laughed to see I weighed 205 lbs! But it felt great to leave most of the luggage behind knowing that someone else would have to drag it around and all I needed to worry about was getting to the ANDRILL End of Season party.

It was a very good party.
By now, through all sorts of bonding experiences, we had formed so many friendships and everyone was together enjoying each others' company. Many of us danced the evening away. Robin and Joanna took a breather in the cooler air outside.

I finally had to stop dancing at midnight! As I left to go back to my dorm room, I tried not to think about saying goodbye, it was easier to say "see you later" in hopes that I would see everyone later.

Fortunately, our flight was scheduled for early afternoon and we could have one last trip to the cafeteria and a real lunch instead of a snack box on the plane.
We then loaded ourselves onto Ivan the Terrabus- or the MART (McMurdo Area Rapid Transit) and bounced along the sea ice "highway" out to the "airport".
There actually is a very small passenger terminal at McMurdo International Airport, but it was such a beautiful spring day we all enjoyed our last hour out on the sea ice with a clear view of Mt. Erebus (too bad I couldn't zap myself to the top of Ob Hill for a photo of the view!). Once all the cargo was loaded onto the C-17 we clamored aboard and found seats along the sides of the plane.
This flight was much more spacious than the C-130 and we could get up and walk around. We even went up in the cockpit for a good view of the mountains and ice slipping away beneath us.

I have to say, it was a very emotional trip back to "civilization". Antarctica has changed me. It's made me stronger, weaker, older, and younger. It has also made me wiser and claimed me as a permanent resident in my heart.

After a very short five hour flight we landed in Christ Church and changed out of our ECW gear, no longer needed in the New Zealand summer evening. We took all of our borrowed gear back to the clothing distribution center and looked more like tourists as we checked back into the Windsor B&B. Once again the friendly voice on the PA system called us to breakfast at 7:30 in the morning with the distinctive "wakey, wakey". I had just enough time to skip around the corner to the art museum before Robin and I had to catch our flight. We were happily surprised that we could spend some of our wait time at the airport outside on the rooftop observation deck.
After three plane flights and two December the 5ths I woke from a nap on the flight coming into Dallas to see the most spectacular sunset I can ever remember. Of course not seeing a sunset in two months might have made this one all the more spectacular.

I'm back home now trying to figure out what day it is, and why it seems so dark at night. It still seems like it should be time to get ready for Thanksgiving. Even though I'm a little disoriented, I do know I'm really glad to be back together with my family and am looking forward to sharing my amazing adventure with the kids at school.

Slice it Thin

2007-12-09T22:16:00.001+13:00

The purpose of making thin sections is to create a thin, polished slice of rock 30 microns thick attached to a microscope slide that can be examined under a polarizing microscope to identify the mineral composition of the rock.

The process starts by attaching the rock sample to a glass microscope slide. Below the rock is being attached against the frosted glass side of microscope slides with epoxy on the pressure jig that provides even pressure and a consistent thickness of epoxy. If samples are very porous or crumbly, they are first saturated with epoxy, sometimes using vacuum impregnation. There can't be any air bubbles or unevenness between the rock and the slide surface. It takes a couple of hours for the epoxy to cure on the hotplate where the jig rests.

The next step is to cut the rock samples down as soon as possible after the epoxy sets, especially large samples as they cool more unevenly and could generate enough force to crack the glass slides. The excess sample is trimmed neatly off with a vacuum swing arm on a rock cutting saw (below). The glass slides provide a good seal on the vacuum plate, the arm allows the new cut to be parallel to the surface of the slide so the finished product will be exactly the same thickness all over.

Next the slides with thicker-than-final rocks firmly attached are placed on the lapping machine to be slowly polished down to the final exactly-30-micron thickness. A vacuum system again holds the smooth glass slide against the weighted chuck, holding the rock sample down to the grinding surface. The grinding plate has to be absolutely flat or the finished slides will be uneven so Steve constantly monitors the process, moving slides and arms around. In the picture below you can see one vacuum chuck loaded up with slides, ready to go on the lapping disc seen behind. Various sizes of abrasive grit slurrys are used to provide the grinding action, getting finer and finer as the process comes to a close. Using a fine grade grit at the end is important for optical quality work. The final few microns are polished away by hand.

Steve Petrushak is an artist and miracle worker. Samples so crumbly that we could barely (or couldn't)

get them out of the core in one piece, he manages to create perfect thin section slides. The ANDRILL team is lucky to have him! He examines each finished slide to make sure it is ready to be used to identify the core's mineral components at that sampled depth. He has requests for 600 thin section slides this season, which works out to about 50 every two days. He is currently managing around 15 every day so will be continuing work after some of the team has left the ice. To work in this field he says is useful to have some background in mineralogy, optical geology, and crystallography, as well as a good mechanical feel.

The finished product!

Penguins and Seals and Whales, Oh My!

2007-12-09T13:07:00.000+13:00

For ten years I visited classrooms talking about Antarctica and teaching children and teachers about the wildlife in Antarctica. Some students began calling me the “Penguin Lady,” so when I was selected as a TEA (Teacher Experiencing Antarctica) in 2002, one of the main things I wanted to see was a…polar bear! (Just kidding…I hope ALL of you know they are only found in the Arctic!) Of course, I really wanted to see a penguin. As luck would have it, the huge iceberg that had broken off the year before was pushed up against the coast and penguins were not in abundance that year. The only one that was sighted came walking by our field camp the day I was getting a cast put on my broken wrist, so I missed him! (THAT’s a story for another day!) My team took hundreds of pictures of the little adelie penguin they named, Charlie, and through them, I felt I had seen him, too…but in reality…ah well. Life is cruel sometimes.

So imagine my excitement when Jean Pennycook, a TEA friend of mine and the education outreach director for David Ainley’s www.penguinscience.com, invited me to come out to visit the rookery at Cape Royds! It would give us a chance to talk about how we are each approaching education outreach for our science teams. I brought Steve Petrushak, an ANDRILL scientist, and Rainer Lehmann, the German ARISE teacher. We packed up our sleep kits and “P” bottles (and yes, that’s what they are for!) for camping overnight, and headed out in a pisten bully with Rob Robbins and his dive team. (see the last few pictures.) It was a two-hour drive across the sea ice. The divers dropped us at the Cape Royds camp and then set up their camp on the sea ice where they melted a hole and did three dives to retrieve a current meter. It took them 12 hours to melt the hole, and then several hours to do the dives, so we had from 6 pm until about noon to explore with Jean.

Jean and me--a very cold day!

Jean welcoming us to the Ainley camp. You can see the Jamesway and one of the Scott tents.

Jean and David welcomed us with a wonderful spaghetti dinner—we had brought a fresh loaf of bread from the galley—and then we walked to the penguin rookery. Their camp is over several large hills and quite a distance from the penguins. I asked why so far, but when we got there I understood the reason! The birds are raucous as they call to their mates, and the young males without mates are constantly making displays and loudly shouting their virility to the world hoping a female will notice them. And the smell is reminiscent of a barnyard!

The penguin rookery is an “ASMA” area—Antarctic Specially Managed Area”- so we were not allowed to walk through it, but we were able to stand on a hill overlooking the area and take lots of pictures. I was amazed that as we stood with the 2000 mating pairs of penguins to our left, and the sea ice to our right, that it was only about 200 meters to OPEN ocean! I asked about that, because when we flew in, there were hundreds of miles of frozen ocean before we reached the continent. How could this water be open? David explained that it is a polyna. “Polyna” is a Russian word meaning unfrozen water surrounded by ice. There is some mystery to how these form in the Southern Ocean, but this one was probably blown free of ice by the strong winds experienced here recently, and as a result of the huge iceberg finally breaking up and moving north. At any rate, the penguins are enjoying a much shorter walk to their dinner “tables” and "showers"!

After several years of a declining population at this Adelie penguin rookery, it has shown an increase this year, and we were thrilled to hear that. Many of the birds are wing-tagged or have microchips for tracking. There are four penguin colonies being studied by Ainley’s group. They are from Cape Royds, the smallest with about 4000 birds, to Cape Bird, Beaufort Island and Cape Crozier, the largest with 130,000 birds. The success of the birds may have something to do with the nearness of the open water, so foraging is much easier. I asked about leopard seals and whether they were a problem predator for this colony. Since this is a small colony, it would not support a leopard seal’s need for massive quantities of penguin meat. I was told it would be like a marathon runner trying to eat enough calories by picking strawberries along the way.

From our vantage point on the hill, we were able to watch the penguins in constant motion marching out to the sea and then marching back again. The males and females take turns sitting on the egg while the other goes to eat and groom. They can’t leave the egg alone for a minute because it will freeze, or worse, the skuas will dive in and grab it. Skuas are large, brown sea gull-like scavengers. They will grab an egg from a penguin, or steal a baby if a parent isn’t diligently watching. I saw a little adult penguin run after a large skua when it landed in the rookery. He won, too. I think the skua decided that it wasn’t worth the aggravation. The skua flew off to a different spot where I’m sure he hoped the penguins weren’t keeping such close watch.

We weren’t allowed in the ASMA area, but we were able to walk to the sea ice edge, and if a penguin decided to come up to us…well, it was okay. And they did! It was just amazing. They are so curious when they see the big red people that they come running over to check you out. If we were very quiet, or sat on the ice, they would come within just a few feet and let us take lots of pictures. A whale swam by, and unfortunately our quick glimpse didn’t allow us to identify the species for sure, but we think it was a minke. Minkes are the least threatened of the whale species in the Southern Ocean. We also had quite a show with a momma seal and her pup. The pup was insisting that she play with him, and like a good mom, she did!

A storm blew up quickly, and we decided we had better hike back to the hut before it got much worse. We weren’t ready to go in, but it would not be fun to be caught on the sea ice or in the high hills between the ocean and camp in whiteout conditions. I slept in Jean’s tent, and the guys bunked in a small shed. But, the next morning dawned with a brilliant blue sky and bright, beautiful light, and we knew we were in store for some better pictures than even the night before.

Again we hiked down to the sea ice and gingerly picked our way through the cracks. It is very slick and is beginning to change, so lots of caution was required. But the effort was well worth it. We saw emperors as well as adelies! And the adelies were very active swimming and jumping through the water and leaping up onto the ice and sliding like a fumbled football before stopping.

So I hope you enjoy these pictures. I will let them tell part of the story. It was an experience I will never forget, and I wish I could find the words to adequately describe the pictures I carry in my head!

Rainer. Louise, and Steve on the way back, stopped at Barn Glacier.

Pisten Bully pulling the divers' "tomato" hut. Thanks Amy, Rob and Addy for the ride! Thanks Steve and Rainer for sharing photos!

Eye to the Microscope

2007-12-08T13:38:00.003+13:00

On the next microscope over, Dr. Kari Bassett spends much of her time examining and describing thin section slides like the one shown twice in different lights below (tune in tomorrow for all the details on how these thin slices of rock are made). Even though we look at them both under a microscope with different lights to learn about them, one major difference between the thin section slides and the smear slides I am working with is that the thin section is a slice of rock of known thickness - 30 microns. Knowing the thickness of the slice allows scientists to use light accurately identify the minerals that make up the rock. A "rock" is anything made of multiple minerals.

On the first look at a slide, the aim is to categorize the compositional type of the rock the slice was taken from (e.g. mostly terriginous) and get some grain size data.

When Kari looked at the slide above (plane polarized light on the left, cross polarized light on the right) some of the things she noticed were the two large chunks of material included in this rock. In plain polar the one on the left is transparent and yellow, in cross polar it is black and opaque (can't see through it) - this means it is composed of glass. How on earth does glass get into rock? Volcanoes! This whole area is tectonically and volcanically active. We even have an active volcano, Erebus, on the island we are living on. The bubbles in the glass indicate that the eruption occurred in cold conditions, the frothy lava didn't off-gas entirely before solidifying. Since it is only a small piece of volcanic glass, it has travelled to the place where it was incorporated into the sea floor. The chunk on the right side of the slide, opaque and black in both types of light, was changed by the weathering process into pyrite or magnetite. Overall this is an iron rich sample.

Even if you don't have one of the vital handbooks for checking on what you are seeing under the microscope, like The Colour Atlas of Rocks and Minerals in Thin Section or Microscopic Identification of Minerals, take a look at the paired images of a thin section slide below and describe features you notice.

Of the many things you might notice, look at the two grains that are brownish tan in the plain polar light on the left. These demonstrate why mineral identification of grains needs both plain polar and cross polar examination. When you look at the same two grains under cross polar, one is still brown and transparent, the other has turned black! That one is glass, the other pyroxene (also a volcanic mineral). Like the pyroxene in this slide, some minerals look the same under either light, others change a lot. Either way, it tells us about what type of mineral it is.

What types of things can you think of that you need different sources of information about to be sure you are accurate? What might be a good analogy for thin section mineral identification?

For more on thin section identification, check out this online guide.

Boxing Day

2007-12-07T18:48:00.000+13:00

Like me, you may never have wondered where all the boxes for the core come from. They are just part of the scenery! No one nips out to the corner store to buy them. Today we had to build them ourselves :)

A major part of planning for any science team heading to Antarctica to do research is figuring out to the last item what will be needed to conduct their science work for their whole visit. There are some things that are common to all science teams that NSF brings in and maintains at Crary

lab: glassware etc. and even some larger pieces of equipment. For teams that require specialized

machines, computers, tools or supplies, they figure out what and how much they will need, then pack it up and ship it to the folks at Raytheon, well in advance of deployment.

Don't miscount - you might end up in the embarrassing position of having brought down too much or too

little. Too much and you wasted precious cargo space. Too little and you might not be able to finish your science work. Logistics pros from Raytheon schedule the cargo in and

out of all USAP sites, planning so that the available space is used to get things there just in

advance of when they are needed, as there isn't too much storage but the science isn't being held back either.

Box party in the lab! Everyone comes and

pitches in to turn huge piles of flat waxed cardboard into core boxes. Today we made boxes for HQ (3 sections of core per box) and NQ (4 sections of core per box) diameter core. These boxes are a little over 1m long. This stuff is tough. Thick waxed board has to be painstakingly bent at the dotted fold lines to make the right shape. There is a lid, base and insert for each box. Making boxes takes time but there is lots of teamwork and music, so we have fun. After, we have to scrape all the extra wax off the tables and floor - not as much fun.

This is our second box party, hopefully we won't need another before we are done. How many boxes do we need?

Just think about this example: for 1000m (or 1km) of core, if a third is drilled in each of the 3 sizes it would make 333m of PQ, 333m of HQ, and 334m of NQ. How many boxes would we need?

(hint: each PQ box holds 2m of core, each HQ box holds 3m of core, and each NQ box holds 4m of core.)

Over the Sea Ice to Mario Zucchelli (Terra Nova) Station

2007-12-07T16:59:00.001+13:00

This is a long-overdue missive about my trip to Mario Zucchelli Station. Before we even left the US, we were told by Louise (the ANDRILL Eucation and Outreach Co-ordinator) that one of the most important qualities we would need to draw on would be flexibility. We practiced this as we hurried up and then waited while our plane was delayed in Christchurch due to bad weather in McMurdo. But I saw another side of this when Louise rushed into the Micropaleontology Lab and said ‘if you want to go to Mario Zuchelli Station for an overnight stay, be ready with all your ECW gear and anything you need for overnight in 20 minutes - the plane is leaving in 40 minutes!’ Mario Zucchelli Station is the Italian Station formerly known as Terra Nova Station. Mario Zucchelli Station is named for the Italian Scientist and Visionary Mario Zucchelli who oversaw and led the Italian Antarctic Program and the development of the Station.

Map of the Ross Sea Region showing loaction
of Terra NovaBay - the site of Mario Zucchelli Station

I made it back to the dorm, then back to the lab (running all the way - it is hard to run in full ECW gear). I was quite excited. We got weighed in, and got a shuttle out to the runway. We flew in a heavily modified Twin Otter. The company contracted to fly the Twin Otters in Antarctica is Ken Borek Air - a Canadian company - most of the pilots have arctic experience and fly in the Arctic when they are not flying in Antarctica.

The Twin Otter being loaded on the ice at Mario Zucchelli Station

The flight was a microcosm of the International flavor of Antarctica: passengers on the flight included a French Geophysicist/Station Manager (his name was Jean-Francois) en route to the joint Italian/French Station (Concordia Station) at Dome C, and three members of the Italian Station, as well as the Pilot and co-pilot, and another Polish-Canadian pilot that was getting a ride back to Mario Zucchelli, plus myself, Joanna, and Graziano (the teacher from Italy). After the initial rush we waited for an hour while some bags were transferred from the C-17 that had just arrived from Christchurch.

Graziano, Myself and Joanna - all excited about our trip!

Mario Zuchelli Station (formerly called Terra Nova Station) is the Italian station at the southern extent of Northern Victoria Land. We flew over the Ross Sea with views of the Transantarctic Mountains to the west (left) in the distance. But the view that captivated or mesmerized me was the view straight down. I had not realized both how complex and how distinctive the different types of sea ice are, and what a complex pattern they make - it was like looking at pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. At first much of the sea-ice was covered by relatively recent snow that was draped over the ice – one could make out subtle patterns in the ice below, such as the pattern left by the channel that was broken by the icebreaker when the ship came in last February/March. As we flow north we started to get a sense of the area representing a jigsaw of ice plates that been broken up, refrozen, then broken up again.

The Incredible World of Sea Ice
Here are some of the distinctive forms and features that I could see (go to the NSIDC or World Meteorological Organization or NOAA for descriptions and definitions of the different types of sea ice).

Sea ice forms by the freezing of sea water. Some sea ice only lasts one season – other sea ice lasts for two or more years, and is called multi-year sea ice. One of the more dramatic seasonal variations in Antarctica is the difference in the extent of winter sea ice compared to the extent of summer sea ice; the changing extent of winter and summer sea-ice extent is being monitored closely by climate change scientists.

Ceramic Tile (my 'Trivet #1') showing winter and summer extent of sea ice around Antarctica - based on data and maps from NOAA)

We flew over the Drygalski Ice Tongue – which was the centre of an iceberg-related drama in 2005. The Drygalski Ice Tongue is the floating portion of the Davis Glacier. It is 20 km wide, 50-200 m thick, and at least 4000 years old (based on radiocarbon dates from penguin guano). The area of open water (polynya) on its northern margin provides access to good fishing for the penguin colonies in the vicinity.

View of edge of Drygalski Ice Tongue and adjacent sea ice (mostly Nilas Ice)

The Drygalski Ice Tongue is moving at a rate of between 50 and 900 meters per year. The iceberg-related drama that I mentioned is the collision of portions of the large iceberg (B-15) that broke off from the front of the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000 with the Drygalski Ice Tongue in April 2005. The chunk of Ice broken off the Ice Tongue measured about 7.5 miles across.

There are several areas of open water in the Ross Sea; these are called polynyas. The map below shows the approximate location of two of the larger polynyas we flew over.

The polynya near the Drygalski Ice Tongue is the result of strong catabatic winds that produce waves and prevent sea ice from forming. Within some of the polynyas that we flew over I could see incredible diatom blooms that look brownish grey in color; the distribution of the diatoms is a consequence in part of wind and wave action; diatoms are algae that make their microscopic shells out of silica - we have a team of diatomists working with Andrill that are using ancient diatoms to help us determine the age of the sediments in the core.

Aerial view of the Terra Nova Polynya with diatom blooms (brownish areas in the water). This picture is taken looking westward towards the Transantarctic Mountains.

Diatom Bloom at the edge of the Ice. Sometimes the thinner and younger Dark Nilas seems to incorporate diatoms from these blooms - it takes on a murky brownish color. There must be enough sunlight here to allow the diatoms to photosynthesize.

At Mario Zuchelli they had been very concerned as to whether the fragments of B-15 would collide with the Campbell Glacier Tongue, which is just north of the station, and essentially protects the water in Gerlache Inlet (the northern part of Terra Nova Bay) from early melt out.

Map of Terra Nova Bay Region of the Western Ross Sea

This is important because at Mario Zucchelli they depend in part on a sea-ice runway as long as possible. It turned out that the Campbell Ice Tongue was unaffected by B-15, but Giuseppe and Roberto did describe the calving of a large portion of the Campbell Ice Tongue “we looked out the window at breakfast one morning and suddenly realized that the front of the ice stream had broken off and a large iceberg was floating away.” They are still waiting to see exactly how this will affect development and melting of the sea ice in Gerlache Inlet.

View to the North. The Campbell Glacier Tongue is the white 'line' almost on the horizon. Cape Washington (location of an Emperor Penguin Colony) is the land in the background.

What amused me about my arrival at Mario Zuchelli was that even here in Antarctica, there was something about the color and light that made it seem Mediterranean (the wonderful pasta and good coffee also helped). It is situated on honey-colored granitic rocks in a small cove.

Mario Zucchelli Station with Mt. Browning & the Deep Freeze Range in the Background. You can see the sea ice runway (...on the sea ice ...)

The sun was low on the horizon, and the rocks had a warm glow to them, emphasizing their beautiful weathered shapes, illuminating the mostly blue and red station. It seemed like a picturesque fishing village in comparison to the enormous station at McMurdo.

Weathered granite at Mario Zucchelli Station

p.s. Oh, and by the way, in case you did not realize it, my ceramics project (see blog 'Don't High-Fire Andrill Penguins') finally produced something useable - Trivet #1, showing the winter and summer sea ice extent made it through the glazing and firing process - I used it earlier in place of a map from a technical publication!

Coon Rapids, Talahi, Friends School, SCSU and NHCC Banners

2007-12-05T09:29:00.000+13:00

The drilling has finished now, the drill rig and drill camp is being disassembled, and brought back in, and most of the teachers and scientists associated with ANDRILL have 'left the ice'. The sea ice runway has been closed, and the C-17s are now flying from Pegasus Runway, the 'white ice' runway on the ice shelf. I could see all the runway-related buildings being moved across the ice from the Lab window last weekend. I have stayed a bit longer because I am working to finish off a geologic trail guide to Observation Hill.

As reports are being organized and equipment packed for shipment off the ice, I am finally taking care of a few things that I need to do. The McMurdo sign is probably one of the easiest places to get to in ‘town’, but every time I had all the school banners together in one place, it was way too windy. Besides, it was easy to procrastinate, because it seemed like I had plenty of time. Finally, when it was a nice day last week (December 1st? – all the days seem to meld into one here, and I never remember what day it is), with the assistance of Bob and Louise, I took all my school and university banners for a photographic session. I also went for a walk with Robin and wore the North Hennepin Community College sweatshirt - It was COLD when I took my Big Red off for that picture!

Talahi Community School
I could hold this banner by myself!

Coon Rapids Middle School
It took two of us to hold this Banner up! You were all here - or your signatures were!

Friends School of Minnesota
It is a small world. When we were taking the pictures we discovered that Bob's father had taught summer school at the secondary school I went to in England.

Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Department, St. Cloud State University
They don't use the husky dogs for sledwork here any more, but the huskies are represented!

North Hennepin Community College, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota
It was cold taking these pictures! I put my Big Red back on straight away

Last Dispatch from Antarctica

2007-12-03T17:51:00.000+13:00

Nine weeks have passed on this remarkable journey. Tonight at 8:00 pm I have “Bag Drag” which is when I need to report to the check-in location and deliver all of my bags for transport out of Antarctica, get my passport checked, and get weighed. My check-in bags are weighed, my carry-on is weighed, and, yes, I too am weighed – with all of my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear on. (It’s very depressing to step on the scale with ECW and full backpack to have your weight announced and recorded!)

Today was my third and final attempt to go on a helicopter field trip to the Dry Valleys. I have been so very excited to do this trip, led by Peter Webb, an Antarctic Old-Timer and a man who has been pivotal in Antarctic geology. Unfortunately, as I write, we are on hold due to snowy weather, and it is not looking very promising.

Because I expected to be out in the field today, my bags are completely packed. I rather relish this state of unexpected calm as I wait to hear on the status of helicopters. There is much to reflect on and I have had precious little time to be alone with my thoughts. In my office here in the Crary Lab, fingers are pounding away on keyboards as people are posting last-minute blogs, or uploading photographs to shared drives. I find myself glued to the window, looking at the snow and remembering the horizons that surround McMurdo. I can’t see them now, but last night at midnight I took a walk to look across McMurdo Sound at the volcanic peaks protruding through ice. The ice was brightly reflecting the intense midnight sun. This truly is a magical place. And a threatening place. From the heart of Mt. Erebus where a lava lake is bubbling and gasping, to the South Pole where the temperature has not risen above -27 degrees F since I have been here. From the highest peak, the Vinson Massif towering at 16,067 feet, to the expansive and ephemeral frozen sea on which we daringly land airplanes. From pressure ridges that reveal the colliding powers of the tides, sea ice, and incoming glaciers, to the maternal watchings of the Weddell Seals over their newborn pups. From the historical journey into Scott’s hut where I touched the very table where meals and conversations were shared, to the launching of a weather balloon to go 80,000 feet into the atmosphere, with a message to my school and my family written on the side – and rushing into the lab to see how it is transmitting data back. And from the excitement of seeing the first ANDRILL cores arrive in the lab full of layers of recent volcanic rocks,
to the joy of hearing my students’ excited voices when I called from Antarctica to share my experiences. These are images I will not soon forget.

If my photographs were somehow lost tomorrow, I would be greatly saddened – mostly because I would not be able to share them with all of you. But having seen these sights, and experienced these images, they will forever be a part of me, captured in my mind’s eye. One changes after experiencing the elements and sights here. I think you are never quite the same person when you go home, than when you arrive.

It has been quite a ride. I am constantly reminded of how very small and insignificant I am in the greater scheme of things. People will come and go, but Antarctica’s natural processes will carry on with little regard for our presence. Nature rules on this continent – and we are merely passing visitors. But those of us who have the privilege of being here are lucky, indeed. We are lucky not just to experience what Antarctica has to offer us, but also to be probing into the natural history and finding out about the secrets hidden within the ice and rocks, and, for some, the atmosphere and animals. It is a position of great responsibility to investigate these mysteries to share them with the world. I feel honored to be sharing this responsibility with the ANDRILL team.

Tomorrow at this time I will be in New Zealand. This will be my last dispatch from “the ice” – but certainly not my last blog. Thank you all for sharing the experience with me – and please continue to visit the www.andrill.org website as we share our findings and images, and continue our blogs.

Cloudy with a Chance of Salad

2007-12-03T15:27:00.000+13:00

McMurdo station is a busy place by all measures. But when a plane arrives with food and mail, a certain frenzy breaks out all over the base. It is quite exciting to watch certain operations jump into action as soon as the wheels of the cargo planes touch down.

A few days ago, a C-17 arrived. The list of passengers was short, which was good news for those of us awaiting mail, and great joy for those of us missing "freshies" (fresh produce). Freshies and mail only arrive when there is room on the aircraft after their weight and the weight of their luggage is calculated. As soon as a cargo plane arrives on the ice, the trucks and forklifts sprung into action. The food and mail, loaded onto pallets, is plucked from the back of the aircraft, and carried up to the appropriate building on the base. Eager teams open their doors to greet the forklifts and offload the cargo.

A few days ago I was an innocent passerby who saw crates of bananas and lettuce arrive. JOY! I ran back to the lab to tell my friends that we would be having bananas and salad with dinner! We all cheered!

Meanwhile, the mail room busily sorted through the mail that was delivered. Mail for field teams with helicopter support is sent down to the helicopter hangar. Mail for McMurdo residents is sorted by name, and those lucky souls who receive packages get their names posted on the McMurdo Operations website, summoning them to come to the post office to pick it up.

It is, indeed, a happy day in McMurdo when an aircraft arrives with cargo!

Smear slides galore!

2007-12-01T23:50:00.000+13:00

My main job with the sedimentology team for the last several weeks has been taking photographs in regular light and cross polar light (see the pictures at the bottom of this blog) of magnified smear slides from the core. Brad Field on the night logging crew makes at least one smear slide from each meter of core (we have drilled 1138.54 meters of core = at least 1139 smear slides) and more from some intervals of sediment. A smear slide is made by taking a little scrape of the sediment with a tool (toothpicks and dental tools are both used) and then spreading that sediment sample thinly on a glass microscope slide. A clear fixative is added to the slide to hold the sediment in place and then a cover slip is attached. Each smear slide is labled with the depth in the core from which it was taken.

These smear slides are used initially by the night logging crew to help with the description of the core and to give the initial compositional name to the sediments. The sediment might be mostly terriginous (sediment from the land), or perhaps have more volcanic or biologic origins. The smear slides also give the team some information about grain sizes. This may make the difference in the name given to the sediment in the formation. For example, diamictite vs sand with pebbles. To be true diamictite, the sediment must have all three grain sizes, gravel, sand and mud, without any one of those size classes, that section of rock will have another name. This information is part of Chris Fielding's core summary shared with the whole group every morning.

The photos I'm taking are primarily for archival purposes. There are scientists working with this information all around the world and most will never travel to Florida to view the actual core itself. The images taken by the teams here are placed on a shared computer drive that everyone in the project has access to. This makes sharing the samples much easier than having to physically send the one set of smear slides to different countries....it also means that we only need one set, because everyone can use it, we don't need one set for each scientist. With 1200 smear slides, you don't want to make lots of sets! It is also part of our data set, the information that core description and characterization is based upon needs to be accessible to everyone in the team.

Compare the two pictures of the same microscope view of smear slide (at 10x). What observations can you make about the various grains with the two kinds of different lighting?

Field Trips, Field Trips and More Field Trips...

2007-12-01T09:52:00.000+13:00

Sorry to have been away from my computer for so long. I've been busy seeing more of Antarctica, specifically the ANDRILL drill site, Robert Scott's hut at Cape Evans, and the Wright Valley. In this blog I'll start with the most recent trip and work backwards because I really want to share this photograph with you.

On Wednesday (11/28) a group of us from ANDRILL went on a field excursion to one of the valleys. We flew in aboard a helicopter that dropped us on the flat area near where I'm standing. Here is a quote from the introduction section of the Wright Valley Field Excursion guide given out to us:
"The Dry Valleys have long been a feature of great interest on the Antarctic continent. Not only because of their unique absence of ice and snow but as a result of this, their accessibility to geologic features that are ice covered in a majority of the continent. Little was known of the region until 1955 when the New Zealand party of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1955-1958, resulted in the first thorough geologic assessment of Victoria Land." (Peter Webb, whom I photographed at our Open House, was one of the students on that expedition.) "...On this trip a variety of erosional and depositional features will be observed that reflect the complex Cenozoic history of the region."

In the photograph above, the distant peaks behind where I'm standing you can see the deposited layers that are lighter in color. Those layers are part of the Beacon Supergroup composed of sedimentary rocks like siltstones, limestones and sandstones and also have fossils of fresh water fish and plants from the Mesozioc Triassic time. The valley that is directly behind me clearly shows erosion from giant glaciers during the Cenozoic era. The other thing you should note is the glacier way off in the distance. That is the Wright Upper Glacier. Beyond that is the East Antarctic ice sheet that covers the largest portion of the continent.

One of the other cool things about this are is that the ground responds to the temperature fluctuations, freezing and thawing causing cracks that form the land into pattern ground- connected polygons. If you look closely at this photograph you will see some rocks laying flat and some sitting on edge. If you look at the lines created by the rocks sitting on their edges you will see lines that meet where the snow is. This is where three polygons of the pattern ground join together. As the helicopter took us to the bottom of the valley I took this next photograph of the valley floor where you can see some of these polygons, pattern ground.

The helicopter dropped us off at a New Zealand hut next to Vanda Lake. We left our gear and hiked around until lunch, came back to the hut and feasted. (I'm glad there was a port-o-potty next to the hut!) We picked up our gear and hiked a few more miles through what will be a very broad, shallow stream bed later in the season. For now, it was dry sand and pebbles.

We dropped our stuff off again at a US hut where some guys were working on the upkeep of a seismic array. They had a very cozy hut and had coffee waiting for us! That's one thing I really, really like about being here- everyone is a friendly neighbor. Too bad we can't all live that way off ice. After coffee and more hiking, the helicopter picked us up right on time and delivered us back to McMurdo just in time for dinner.

This photo shows the lower portion of the Wright Valley. Imagine where I was standing in the first photo as the top of the valley, this would be near the middle and the Ross Sea is still beyond.

Don't High-Fire Andrill Penguins!

2007-11-30T23:00:00.000+13:00

Penguin made in mold from ordinary slip clay (?)
that has been glazed and is awaiting firing

The title of this blog requires some explanation. Do you recall that several weeks ago I mentioned going to the ceramics room sometimes? What I did was I took the fine material that accumulated in the boxes beneath the rock saws that we were using to cut samples from the core for various research purposes.

Rock Trimsaw used for cutting
samples for research from Andrill Core

Bucket of 'cuttings' collected
from box beneath rock trimsaw

I had the vision of making a world-class piece of art from Andrill clay. Note that the last time I touched clay was in Middle School or High School. Luckily I was able to turn to some of the regulars in the ceramics room for help, which include John, Denise, Jena, and Dave, as well as Brie and Meredith.

John working on an intricate pattern on a vase.
John is a master of patience and a ceramics room guru.

First of all, the material I had from the saw included lots of silt and coarser particles, so I had to wet it, make it really goopy, and put it through a sieve. John suggested that I try a mold.

The goopy mud mixture I used in my efforts to make a penguin mold

Penguin #1
They have a neat penguin mold. Basically one just pours the goopy clay in, then pours it out again, and repeats several times, then leave it for 24 to 48 hours to dry somewhat, then take it out, let it dry a bit more, then sand any irregularities off, and it is ready for ‘bisque-firing’ or ‘low firing’ in the kiln. This was all really exciting, and I got lots of help from people – they were all quite curious to see whether it would work.

Denise works on trimming one of her works of art
So far so good. It came out of the kiln after bisque firing a deep reddish-brown color. I did not think to take any pictures of my prized Andrill penguin. I then decided I would just clear glaze it – I thought that the natural purity of 13 million-year-old McMurdo Sound clay and silt in my artwork should be allowed to shine through.

Gena working on adding handles to some cups. She is a cup-making demon.
She works as a Helo-Tech (the person who helps people buckle themselves safely
into a helicopter, and makes sure the cargo is loaded safely,
and rides with the pilot and helps in landings and take-offs).

Several days later I went in to the ceramics room and Gena looked at me with downcast eyes “I have some sad news for you.” My penguin had collapsed and turned in to a glazed mass of pottery –but it was a beautiful deep green color.

Remains of penguin #1

Moral of the story: One cannot ‘high fire’ Andrill penguins because the material does not have enough clay in it to bind it –it is too silty, and it just 'flows'. The experts in the ceramics room all reckon that I will be able to low-fire Andrill creations without them collapsing, because the low fire is the same temperature as the bisque-firing, which we know worked. We have yet to see …

Penguin # 2

I tried pouring the goopy mixture into the mold again, but I didn’t trim it properly at the top, so it cracked as it dried. I then needed to ‘rehydrate’ the clay and add some ordinary clay to help bind the siltier material together.

Penguin # 3
I poured the goopy mixture into the mold again, and left it to dry – carefully making sure that I trimmed the material at the top. That was Sunday. Monday I went to Cape Evans (and saw REAL penguins), then I was working Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Whoops. I went in tonight, and the penguin was cracked – I had left it in the mold too long.

Ceramic penguin rookery - the creations of Dave - who helped me save Trivet # 2
Dave hand sculpts marine mammals. He is currently working on a fish for one of the biologists.

Penguin # 4
I poured it into the mold tonight (Friday 30th), and I am hoping that everything works. I will have to make sure that I get back to the ceramics room sometime before Sunday night.

Trivet # 1
I have also tried making several trivets. Basically I added ordinary clay to the Andrill clay and I let it dry out a bit, then I rolled it out, and let it dry a bit more until I could carve the texture for my picture into the clay. The first one is a map of Antarctica showing the winter and summer sea-ice extent. It has just been bisque-fired, but is not out of the kiln yet. It definitely won’t make it into a museum – it was quite buckled and upturned at the edges before going in to the kiln – but I am hoping it stays in one piece, so I can glaze it.

Trivet # 2
I used the same process as for Trivet # 1, except I scored it more (too) deeply to prevent it from curling or buckling. I carved a scence from Beacon Valley into it. Then I lifted it up, and it broke along the score lines. Luckily Dave and John were there, and Dave helped me patch it with paper clay. Today I tried to tidy up the carved surface, and put it on the shelf for bisque firing.

I’ll miss the ceramics room – playing around and being creative is something I do not normally get the time to do, and I have really enjoyed going there when I have the time. I have also gotten to meet and talk with people at McMurdo that are not part of Andrill, which is good.

Brie (she is a baker in the kitchen) and
Meredith (works in the kitchen) work on their creations

So, even if Penguin #4 bites the dust, I’ll still be happy about all the time I spent over there – thanks y’all. I've accepted the reality that I will not create a museum centerpiece - I just hope that something I make stays together so I can take it home!

Launching a Met Balloon

2007-11-30T21:54:00.000+13:00

November 17, 2007

Meteorological (met) balloons are launched from McMurdo twice daily to gather atmospheric data that helps predict the weather. A weatherman’s job in Antarctica is especially difficult for several reasons. First, there is no radar data for the meteorologists to use for this area. Think about how our weathermen at home use radar images as a matter of course! Second, weather here can change dramatically and dangerously in just a matter of hours. But the greatest challenge for the weather predictors here is that they are acutely aware that people’s lives depend on the accuracy of their predictions. Helicopter flights and fixed wing flights are governed by the decisions made at the Met Center, as are field teams’ travel plans. If a plane takes off, it must be able to fly to its destination. There are precious few other places for them to land if the weather deteriorates.

So, imagine my excitement when Patricia Ballou invited me to launch one of the met balloons. Patricia has quite an amazing story. She is on a leave from the army where she has deployed to the Mideast twice, once to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. She worked as a combat weatherperson in the army and is now gathering data and helping predict the weather in Antarctica this year. She is also writing climate interviews for Celsias. Check out her interview with David Harwood, the co-chief of ANDRILL and keep watching for an interview she is working on with me! (www.celsias.com then scroll down the right side to Patricia’s name.)

Patricia is adding in weather data to the computer that came in from one of the Met field stations while I was there.

I met her at the Met Center and when I arrived she had begun hydrating the Sonde. The Sonde is a complicated device that records many different types of data including temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity, while also carrying an antenna that allows satellites to track it as well as to send data back to the McMurdo weather computers. This morning, ten satellites were tracking this one balloon! I found it interesting that the same data is received in South Carolina where besides helping predict the weather here, it is being used in world climate models.

Patricia and I took the fully hydrated Sonde down to the “balloon shack,” a two story structure built on prime McMurdo real estate. When the door is opened, what a view there is of the Ross Sea and the Trans-Antarctic Mountains!

Balloon shack—notice the two story section—very large Met balloons can be inflated here.

Patrica’s pointing out the view of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and Hut Point.

Patricia turns on the helium pumps in the huge outside tanks.

Blowing up the balloon with helium.

Patricia deftly ties the Sonde onto the inflated balloon.
The Sonde has a small wire that records all of the measurements--and an antenna on the other end that sends the info to the McM computers.

Guess who I am missing!

Walking out of the balloon shack was tricky. It was very windy and felt like I could take wing and fly at any moment. The wind kept whipping the balloon around over my head, so I hung on to it and the Sonde, worried I would mess this up and ruin an expensive piece of equipment!

It felt like the wind was winning at this point. I was concentrating on the directions Patricia had given me—let go of the balloon and wait until you feel it tug on the Sonde, then let it go too.
Mentally rehearsing— concentrate! Don’t mess up!

And there she goes! If you look carefully, you can see the Sonde unraveling its string to dangle quite some distance from the balloon.

Walking back to the Met building I took this picture—it’s the building with the large white golf ball on top. Notice the “catwalk” because in the next picture I am ON that walk. Patricia and I went up on the roof where she takes precipitation samples. I liked the view! But I didn’t like the one flight climb down the metal rung ladder to get back inside!

Following the tracks

2007-11-30T17:37:00.000+13:00

In the roads around town, there are many interesting tracks made by the wide variety of heavy equipment and all-terrain vehicles used here. The picture above shows the tracks and some of the vehicles they were made by.

It isn't always easy to match them up. I still haven't seen the vehicle that made these:
Based on the marks it has left in the snow and dirt, I can guess what the tire or tread surface that made it might have looked like and I can get an idea about the path it followed as well as how large/wide a vehicle it might be.

Similarly, we can use the tracks and paths left behind in the marine sediments of the core by small animals to figure out what type of animal (often worms) might have left them, their size, how they were moving or behaving, and perhaps how many were active in an area (population). These sections of sediment that were disturbed by biological organisms post-deposition but pre-consolidation (after the sediment settled but before it turned into rock) are described as being bioturbated - mixed by living organisms. The most important information that the ANDRILL project gains from these trace fossils are from those that can be used as index fossils - giving a date or date range for the rock in which they appear. Many of these characteristic trace fossil types have specific names even though we don't know the exact species or genus that created it. One type, called escape traces or Fugichnia, are created when a shallow burrowing, near surface, or surface marine animal gets burried suddenly under a quantity of sediment and has to dig furiously for the surface to survive. (Look up "trace fossils" or "trace fossil classification" for more information about these fascinating fossils!)

In the photo of bioturbated sediment in the core above and to the left, see if you can find burrows and other evidence of the movement of organisms through the sediment. What might you be able to tell about the organism involved?

Notice what the movement of organisms has done to the layering of the fine sediments. Compare it to the picture on the right of soft sediment deformation caused by physical or mechanical stresses experienced by the sediment over time. What similarities and differences can you find?

Food Preparation in McMurdo

2007-11-29T01:26:00.000+13:00

McMurdo Station has a population of approximately 1,200 people in the austral summer. A base this size requires quite a network of support and infrastructure. In these past few days, I have had the opportunity to go behind the scenes to see how some very fundamental services are operated: food, water, and sewage. This blog will focus on food, and the process of feeding 1,200 hungry souls.

Executive Chef for the United States Antarctic Program, Sally Ayotte, gave us a tour of the food operations at McMurdo. Sally has been a chef in Antarctica for 12 years, 6 years at South Pole Station, and 6 years in McMurdo. She oversees a staff of 28 cooks, including sous chefs, production chefs, front chefs, and bakers, as well as 35 dining attendants. It is quite an operation to oversee! They produce 4 meals a day, including the Midnight Rations ("midrats") for McMurdo Residents and visitors who work on the night shift.

Sally is a registered dietition who attended culinary school in Colorado. She now resides in Colorado when she is not in Antarctica, and 6-7 months per year she plans menus, hires staff, and deals with all of the food ordering and planning for the future seasons in the three major U.S. bases in Antarctica: McMurdo, South Pole, and Palmer.

In McMurdo there are three buildings for storing food: the "Keep Frozen" building, the "Can Be Frozen" building, and the "Do Not Freeze" building. It seems ironic that McMurdo would need a building and refrigeration to keep food frozen, but the food needs to stay at a steady temperature - despite what outside temperatures are doing.

The Galley is where food is prepared, served, and eaten. Sally took some of the ARISE team on a tour of the Galley in a less-busy time, between breakfast and lunch. Chefs were busy everywhere: one was making guacamole, one was taking cookies out of the oven (Wednesday is cookie day here in McMurdo), one was putting the final touches on a big vat of soup. They work with great efficiency and cooperation - with supplies that are plentiful, but not always optimal.

"Freshies" - which are any type of fresh produce, come in on incoming cargo flights. Sometimes weeks go by with no "freshies" because either there are no flights at all, or there is no room for extra food cargo. So the chefs have to be quite creative and adaptable.

Almost all of the food for the year comes in on a re-supply ship the previous year. In February of this year, a ship will arrive with a year's supply of food for McMurdo and the South Pole. Some of the quantities are staggering: 70,000 pounds of beef, 50,000 pounds of poultry, 20,000 pounds of seafood.
In fact, for one recent meal (Thanksgiving) the amount of food served included: 1,200 pounds of turkey, 400 pounds of roast beef, 400 pounds of potatoes, 1,200 dinner rolls, 50 pounds of cherry tomatoes, 100 pumpkin pies, and more. Imagine being in charge of so much food!

Sally and her team do a phenomenol job of feeding all of us. I think the food truly is the way into a person's heart!

A penguin a day...

2007-11-27T21:08:00.000+13:00

Even though I have only seen one distant Adelie and no Emperor Penguins while here at McMurdo, there are enough penguins around the base to make up for it! Everyone has the same fixation. There are penguins at the water plant,

penguins at the Field Safety Training Program garage,

penguins collecting library books,

and penguins at the store.

They even have a house,

and tell us what to do!

There are penguins at the hospital,

penguins at Scott's hut,

and, of course, the occasional kiwi.

Do you see what I see?

2007-11-27T14:22:00.001+13:00

When I was in Tanzania, I found out a curious fact. When I am scanning the bush around me, I don't pick up leopards or other cats at all. I notice birds and ungulates, am often one of the first ones to see them, but a cat would have to be chewing on my leg before I can find it. Possibly this is because I spend most of my time in Alaska with half an eye on the look out for moose or bears and I am always looking for a new bird. My search image is well developed for these types of shapes and motions....but I've never spent any significant time in an area where it was important to notice large cats - or for that matter, snakes, which I've nearly stepped on at times.

Very similarly, the scientists looking at the core bring their areas of greatest experience with them when they look at the core. A volcanologist will tend to notice igneous features while, for a sedimentologist, the most obvious parts of the same section of core will be the layering and texture patterns of the grains of sediment. We all do this to a greater or lesser extent - we tend to be drawn to and pay more attention to the things that interest us most or that we are most familiar with.

One of the great strengths of the multi-disciplinary nature of ANDRILL is that everyone brings their special area of interest to the endeavor and then shares their ideas and observations with others who have very different starting points and backgrounds. The scientific discussion then involves exploring the ways in which the data might fit together to answer the big question of what was happening in this area of Antarctica in the past. The final explanation that is rendered must accomodate all data from many science disciplines, making it a much stronger statement than one coming from just one viewpoint.

The interpretation of the SMS sediment core needs scientists from both tectonic and environmental perspectives. For example, evidence in the core for deeper water environments may indicate an increase in sea level caused by ice sheet melting or it might indicate rifting and subsidence in the plates of the area - or more likely, a combination of both. We are looking in the core at a record of sedimentation and erosion. Sedimentation happens in where there is both space for sediment to accumulate and sediments in the area to fill it. We need a complete picture of both the tectonic and environmental factors that might be creating the sediment and space for it to fill in order to understand what was happening here in the past.

Take a look at the picture at the top and see what animal you notice first (there are two). What are the things you focus on in an outdoor environment, what do you see first? How about in indoor environments? How does what you notice differ from what someone else in your school or family notices?

Taylor Valley by Helo

2007-11-26T19:38:00.000+13:00

Last week at this time, I was sitting at the window seat of a Bell 212 helicopter with my jaw on the floor as we flew through some of the most magnificent scenery I've ever seen. The sun was out, there were fluffy white clouds to give a bit of definition and the wind wasn't bad enough to bounce us around very much. A perfect ride!

Taylor valley, unlike its neighbor, Ferrar, has no single glacier filling the entire valley. There are side glaciers coming into the valley, like the Commonwealth glacier where we stopped to hike, but most of the main valley floor is a series of small lakes or dry ground. The upper valley is where the Taylor glacier is located, and we flew over the vast area where the Taylor and Ferrar glaciers go side by side. At some point in the past, the mouth of the Taylor valley was blocked and the whole thing filled up with water. You can see the remnant shelves left around the edges of the valley showing at least two different water levels.

What landform features do you see in the photos that were created by glaciers? By wind? By flowing water?

Reflections from Granite Harbor

2007-11-25T10:05:00.000+13:00

In my last blog, I shared information with you about the science conducted at the Mackay Sea Valley Seismic Survey. It was a very successful field season, and great information was learned about the subsurface rocks – to help us plan for the next drilling season.

This blog will share the personal experience of that same trip. I had anticipated this experience for quite some time, and was overwhelmed with excitement when my chance finally came to head for the field.

I flew out of McMurdo on November 12 in an Huey helicopter. I arrived at the helicopter pad two hours early, even though I only needed to be there half an hour early for my safety briefing. I flew out with Ken, another ARISE participant, and Thai, the mountaineer for the final leg of the field season in Granite Harbor. We were flying to the north around 100 miles to a location on the Ross Sea, adjacent to the Mackay Glacier which flows out of the Central Transantarctic Mountains. The field party had already been at work for 3 weeks – and I was flying in for the final push. As we flew out, Thai sat near the window and surveyed the ice beneath us. Our camp was set up on sea ice, and the traverse back to McMurdo was going to involve driving 100 miles across sea ice which, at this time of year, is starting to show significant cracks.

From the window of the helicopter I marveled at the icebergs which had calved off from glaciers and became frozen into the sea ice when it froze for the year last year. It was like watching time stand still before my very eyes. Some of the icebergs stand 200 feet tall or taller (and considerably deeper than that below the water surface) – and they reflect light in the most amazing ways, with every shade of white and blue and gray. They stand like sentinels with ever-changing light.

As we flew, we left the volcanic province that surrounds the McMurdo area, and flew past the Dry Valleys and along the Central Transantarctic Mountains. By the time we started to land, we were in an area with high granite cliffs surrounded by expansive glaciers coming right down to the vast frozen Ross Sea. Many of the mountains were covered with ice, but mountain peaks could be seen deep into distance.

As we approached camp we could see flashes of blue and yellow on the frozen seascape below. Towering pinkish granite cliffs came right down to the ice. We gently landed right next to camp, and, when given the signal, I took off my helmet and climbed out of the helicopter. I had arrived!

My friends, who had gone out three weeks earlier, welcomed me warmly and showed me around camp. I was struck by how cozy and warm camp was – out in the middle of the Antarctic wilderness. There were 2 Rac tents, one for cooking/eating/socializing, and one for computing/data processing/ storing and drying out field gear. Scott tents were used for sleeping, 2 per tent, with one bathroom tent.

I couldn’t get over the views from camp. For the first hour, I couldn’t bring myself to go “inside.” Rather, I just walked around and around thinking, “I must be the luckiest person in the world!” Then, when Joan, our cook, made a beautiful dinner of beef in a coconut curry sauce, I knew that I had indeed found Nirvana!

A typical day was to wake up between 6:30 and 7:00 am, and eat a hearty breakfast of pancakes and bacon, or eggs and potatoes, and coffee. By 8:00 we were on our way to the field. (See my previous blog to learn about the purpose for the survey and the way it was conducted). Before the seismic surveys were done, a line had to be flagged. For the first couple of days I was involved with flagging the lines. This entailed using a GPS unit to establish a location. A 50 meter cable was then used to plant a flag every 50 meters, keeping a perfectly straight line with the previous flags. When the flag location was determined, an auger was used to drill a hole in the ice to securely plant the flag. The lines were typically 1 or 2 kilometers long. Once the line was established, we had to go back and label all of the flags, and get an accurate GPS location for each flag, as these would soon be linked to the geophysical data being collected.

The driller and the science lab, both pulled by Piston Bullys, followed later. They would pull their equipment up to each flag and drill, and then collect seismic data. I worked both with the driller, shoveling snow away from the drill hole, and with the science lab, deploying the airgun into the hole. At the appropriate moments, the seismologists would fire the airgun, and their computers would monitor the return of the sound waves from the sea floor and below to the geophones which were in a streamer behind the mobile science lab.

My first day in the field, we were concentrating on flagging a line, when suddenly we saw three emperor penguins walk up to us! They are so playful and curious – and walked right up to us, with absolutely no fear. They stood near us for at least 15 minutes while they interacted with one another, squawking and rubbing beaks, and finally the scooted off. Little did they know they had absolutely made my day!

One day, after our work was done, we went exploring a nearby point called Cape Archer.
To get to Cape Archer we drove our snowmobiles past some deep pressure ridges with seals all around. Here we were able to get up fairly close to see the mother seals and their young pups. The mothers noticed when we approached, but were not afraid. Nearby, there was a seal hole where a mother and her pup kept bobbing up and down in and out of the water. I felt so privileged to have this close encounter with Weddell Seals – and for them to not be frightened of me! I knew I was a visitor in their territory and I felt humbled by their acceptance of me.

A bit beyond, we came across a magnificent ice cave at the edge of the interface between a granite cliff and a glacier. The colors, texture, and lighting were beautiful as we treaded into the cave – through an old crevasse which used to be deep in the heart of the glacier before it advanced its way toward the sea.
One was always aware that bit could break off or shift at any time – so we didn’t venture too far in, but it was spectacular nonetheless.

After just 9 days in the field, our work was done and it was time to head back to McMurdo with all of our gear. We were going to traverse back from Granite Harbor to McMurdo. The traverse was one of those profound events in life that are
difficult at the time, but that you wouldn't miss for anything. I rode on the back of a snowmobile for 13 hours. The traverse party consisted of 2 snowmobiles, each with 2 persons, and two Pisten Bullys pulling laden-down sleds full of gear, and a total of 6 passengers.
We left sunny Granite Harbor, and in less than a half hour, we were in overcast skies and moderate visibility. The ride on the snowmobile was cold and windy, but a great adventure.
We rode past icebergs, nursing seals, big cracks in the sea ice. We plodded along slowly, with the Pisten Bullys being our limiting factor (maximum speed of perhaps 15 mph). But slowly the mountains and glaciers moved behind us, and Mount
Erebus come closer into view. The snowmobiles stopped at the ANDRILL drill site for a brief bit of warmth and a tour, while the Pisten Bullys went on ahead. 45 minutes later, we took off from the drillsite and sped on to catch up with the advance party of Pisten Bullys. Partway there, 3 Adelie penguins came waddling across our path. With due humility, we silenced the engines and squatted low for them to come and check us out. They appear to be such happy creatures! Again, there were fearless and inquisitive!

When they were done checking us out, and slid off on their bellies, we ignited our engines and took off for the final stretch – to catch up with the Pisten Bullys and make it home in time for "midrats" (Midnight Rations – the midnight
meal served in McMurdo). A windstorm picked up on our final stretch, and our last leg was though a blizzard. We followed the flags to circumnavigate the ice runway, and finally reached McMurdo just before midnight.

Room keys were awaiting us at the housing office. We charged for the showers – and welcomed the chance to get clean – and then settled in for a hot meal and some much needed sleep.

I would have happily stayed out for another two weeks – but I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to get out into the deep field.

Meanwhile, back in the ANDRILL lab, we hit our target depth of 1,000 meters and the windows into climates past are continuing to captivate the science teams. After a brief pause to do some logging of the drill hole, we will continue drilling for another few days before calling it done. The ice is started to soften a bit, and they will need to haul the whole rig (90 tons of it!) soon. What a sight that will be!!

On Top of the World (at the 'Bottom' of the World)

2007-11-24T14:50:00.000+13:00

So, I feel 'On Top of the World' because it has been a VERY BIG and exciting week.

First, we had our field trip to the Beacon Valley, which is part of the Dry Valleys Area in Antarctica, and we ended up staying overnight at the New Harbour Camp because the helo could not fly back to pick us up because of bad weather at McMurdo. I have read about the Beacon Sandstone and Ferrar Dolerite (some of the rocks we saw) since I was an undergraduate student - and now I was actually going to the Dry Valleys to see them! Now I am trying to figure out how to use what I saw and learned in my teaching. The excitment did not stop there. On Wednesday I had the an incredible opportunity - an overnight trip to Mario Zucchelli Station (formerly known as Terra Nova - the Italian Station), coming back Thursday morning. This trip was a result of the great effort put in to international cooperation in education and outreach, as part of ANDRILL ARISE. I was very fortunate to have this opportunity, along with Graziano Scotto and Joanna Hubbard.

Today (Saturday 24th November) we have our Thanksgiving Dinner, and there was a 5K run (called the Turkey Trot) this morning out to the Ice Runway and back. Far too much for me to tell you about all at once, so I'll try to break it up into little pieces over the next week or so -that way you can see what I saw and learned in Beacon Valley and at Mario Zucchelli - I am still somewhat overwhelmed by it all!

About the Turkey Trot
Here are some of the runners from ANDRILL. Down below you can see me dressed for the run with my race number. I have not found out how long it took me - I was quite slow (longer than 30 minutes), and one of the last runners in - although there were a bunch of people that walked it behind me. It is just like a fun run anywhere - we signed up half an hour before it started and got our race numbers. They divided us into two groups - under 40 and over 40 (I was in the over 40 group, in case you are wondering). I wore some special winter long johns that I have for running in Minnesota, with wind pants over them. I had a polypropylene top, my windbreaker, a wool beanie, a neckwarmer, gloves and sunglasses. I wore my lightweight hiking shoes - I was worried about slipping on the ice, and they have a firmer grip than my running shoes do. Unlike many people, I had not already tried running on the ice. Running on the snow and ice was the hardest part - it was a beautiful day with only a relatively light breeze.

On Top of the World?
Now, lets get back to the topic of this blog - 'On Top of the World.' How often do you talk about places in the Southern Hemisphere as being 'on the bottom of the world' or make jokes about people 'walking around upside-down' in the Southern Hemisphere? The portrayal of our planet with the Northern Hemisphere ‘at the top’ is simply an artifact of how early European explorers drew their maps. Planet Earth is simply a sphere moving through space; there is no ‘top’ or ‘bottom.’ It is just our perception and visualization of the Universe, based on early maps that make us draw the earth with the North Pole in the ‘up’ position, and the South Pole in the ‘down’ position.

To students at Coon Rapids Middle School:

I am working on a blog about the science process for you - check back in tomorrow (Sunday 25th).

Signs of Spring

2007-11-24T12:33:00.000+13:00

When we first arrived, low temperatures hovered around -30F without windchill. As weeks go by, those numbers keep creeping upwards- now nearly always in the positive. Recently any day that is sunny has created puddles, dripping eaves and icicles, and muddy spots. I even saw some joggers the other day.

Another sign of spring is the return of our skuas. These scavenging birds are very effective at finding food resources, they know that Building 155 is where the galley is located, anyone carrying out food wrapped for later has to be prepared to keep it from the birds. The first skua of spring was actually spotted flying past on the 4th of November but they didn't really move in to town until a week or so after that. Now they are sitting boldly in the middle of the road or parking area most mornings.

The hard packed snowberms that surrounded the buildings and encroached on the roads when we first arrived are mostly gone now. It seems like a strange time to have Thanksgiving, the sun and melting make me think of Easter and spring instead?

What signs of changing seasons do you look for or notice first?

The Mackay Sea Valley Survey

2007-11-23T13:55:00.000+13:00

At long last, I made my way out to the deep field camp of Granite Harbor for the geophysical survey of the Mackay Sea Valley. Granite Harbor is a small bay in the Ross Sea, nestled along the old granite cliffs that form the basement rocks of the Central Transantarctic Mountains. The setting is quite breathtaking! The Mackay Glacier is a large glacier which terminates in the Ross Sea. In past years, when the ice sheet was larger, the Mackay Glacier carved out a deep trough on the continental shelf. In subsequent years, as the climate warmed, this trough became an area where deep packages of marine sediments accumulated. Those marine sediments are the reason for this site survey.

The Ross Sea in this area is still frozen over – so our camp is built on frozen sea ice, approximately 2 meters thick. As we look out toward the sea, there is solid ice as far as the eye can see – with old icebergs from last year, or perhaps older, embedded in the sea ice.
They are quite monumental – standing sometimes hundreds of feet up above the ice surface and can be seen for many miles away. As the sun moves across the sky during the day, the illumination of the icebergs is constantly changing from bright white to deep blue to gray – to every shade in between.

Our deep field camp consists of 11 people. 7 Scott tents, 2 Rac tents, 2 snowmobiles, and 2 Pisten Bullys (oversnow vehicles).
The Scott tents are for sleeping, 2 per tent, and the Rac Tents are for eating and for science. The Rac tents have heat and generators for recharging electronics. It is remarkably comfortable and “cushy” in this remote camp!

Why are we here? We are in Granite Harbor to conduct a seismic survey of the seafloor and the rocks below the seafloor which accumulated in this large trough carved by the Mackay Glacier. Under the leadership of Dr. Ross Powell, of Northern Illinois University, we are working to get a picture of the rocks below the seabed where thick accumulations of Holocene (the past 7,000 years) sediments are located. These sediments are of interest because they can tell us information about what the climate has been like in this part of Antarctica for the past 7,000 years, and how it compares to the climate seen in atmospheric records and marine geological records for other parts of Antarctica during the same time period. The seismic survey will not drill for rocks, but will provide information for future drilling projects about where the sediments are located and where a future drill hole should be placed.

Seismic surveys operate using a sound blast, made by an airgun, which is set off below the ice. We drill a hole through the sea ice so that we can place the airgun, which is on a cable, down 8 meters in the water. We have a 1.5 kilometer long streamer that is dragged on the ice, behind the piston bully that carries the laboratory with all of the seismic recording devices. The streamer contains 60 geophones that record the sound waves after they have traveled out of their air gun, and traveled down through the different layers of rock on and below the sea floor, and been reflected back up. Different types of rocks give off different types of reflections, and require differing amounts of time to travel back up to the geophones. Computers in the mobile lab record the sounds as they bounce back to the geophones, and based on their time delay, they give an image of the different layers of rock in the subsurface. This type of work is typically done by ship with the geophones towed behind the ship. We are using a very new technology to conduct this survey over sea ice, and getting excellent results.

The survey was very successful in identifying where the pockets of sediment are. The seismic data was all collected digitally and will require continued processing back at Montana Tech University where Dr. Marvin Speece, the geophysicist on the site survey, teaches. Once processed, the seismic records will tell us in much greater detail, about the types and thicknesses of sediments – and allow scientists to determine the optimal site for future drilling.

Field work dominated life in Granite Harbor. But there were also wonderful moments of exploration and fun. Please visit my next blog, entitled "Reflections from a Remote Field Camp" to learn more about life and exploration in the Granite Harbor area.

Educator Night at Mario Zucchelli!

2007-11-22T20:23:00.000+13:00

American Night at Scott Base is a Thursday night tradition where shuttles run from McMurdo to Scott and back for most of the evening and Americans are welcome to visit the Kiwi station. Kate, Graziano and I did the Italian & American version when we had the good fortune to be invited to visit the Italian station up the coast - Mario Zucchelli (formerly Terra Nova). We grabbed our ECW and overnight things in about 20 minutes and hightailed it to the airfield. We rode north in a 14 seater souped-up Twin Otter run by Ken Borek Air Ltd, a Canadian company under contract for smaller scale Antarctic air transport between many nations' stations in this area (2-8 hour flight radius). Also on the flight with us were a few Italian base staffers, the new French station manager for Concordia (a year-round joint French and Italian base at Dome C on the polar plateau) and a Polish-Canadian pilot catching a ride. Antarctica is a wonderful model for international cooperation, everyone is working towards similar scientific or logistical goals under extreme conditions.

The hour and a half flight was a fabulous flightseeing opportunity as we hugged the coast of Ross Island, then crossed sea ice in many forms, a glacial ice tounge and two polynyas (large ice-free areas). The patterns created by the fracturing and crushing, melting and refreezing of the ice were ever changing and gorgeous. I was especially fascinated by the new ice where fractures had split apart and then pushed over and under each other, creating a zipper effect.

Mario Zucchelli station is situated on a granite peninsula with wonderful views in every direction. We were warmly welcomed, fed an amazing dinner of clam pasta, breaded sole and soup, and then given a tour of the station. Much of the main station building is made from connected container vans and is a cheerful blue and red. Kate and I found our names on the door of our dorm room, and very cozy bunk beds inside with fluffy feather comforters. We didn't spend much time in our room, as we had such a short time at the base, we got out and did as much walking as we could. The weathered granite with exceptionally large crystals around the station was very different from what we see on our volcanic island home, or in our visit to the Dry Valleys. After a great breakfast we took off for McMurdo, far too soon. A HUGE THANK YOU to Roberto, Jean, Lucia, Guissepe, and all the other folks at MZ who made our quick visit so special!

How many countries have Antarctic or Sub-Antarctic Stations? How many are seasonal vs year-round? How many people work there? Can you find pictures of what some look like?

Beacon Valley...or Gilligan's Island?

2007-11-22T18:44:00.001+13:00

Beautiful view of a huge glacier in the Dry Valleys.

Two tiny climbers in red are on this mountain--can you find them? This is to give an idea of scale!

Remember the old TV show, Gilligan’s Island? Well, we also started out on a fateful trip…

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…a tale of a fateful trip.
It started from this icy shore aboard a flying ship.

The mate was a mighty helo tech, the pilot brave and sure…
Eight passengers took flight that day for an eight-hour tour…

The weather started getting rough, the tiny craft was tossed
Helo Ops stopped all the flights, so the crew would not be lost.

The explorers hiked across the hills, to the shore of New Harbor Isle…
They had to make the best of things, they’re here for a long, long time.

We took a helo field trip out to Beacon Valley--it's a valley farther than the Taylor Glacier which was as close to the polar plateau as I had been before. The mountains at the end of Beacon actually hold back the polar ice sheet. Beacon is one of the Dry Valleys; an incredible landscape that reminds one of Mars—red sand and rocks, and dry as a bone. According to written records, it has not precipitated there in over fifteen million years, and what does fall is all snow or ice, which often ablates before hitting the ground.
Louise showing scale of a rock split during freeze-thaw cycles. Looks like Our helo taking off after dropping us in Beacon Valley.
a huge 3-D jigsaw puzzle!

It was windy and very cold, but as long as we kept moving, we were quite comfortable. We hiked around the bouldery valley floor and up the mountain slopes to take a look at the outcrops of rock, which are partially responsible for feeding sediments into Victoria Basin where we are drilling right now. After about four and a half hours the helo picked us up and took us to Commonwealth Glacier where, in 2002, I had studied the streams that melt and run-off in the summer. It was exciting to “come home” to the place I had spent eight weeks my first time in Antarctica.

We were dropped with our survival bags about a mile and a half from the glacier, so we hiked over to take a closer look, then hiked back to the drop point. We still had an hour before the helo was to come back, so some (I opted out--I had already hiked about five hours--a lot of it uphill) climbed down a steep embankment (about fifty yards down) and then up the other side to an outcrop there. I took a nap on a huge, tabular rock--great view of the glacier and mountains, and it felt great!

The rest of the group finally came back, and we waited about half an hour for the helo which didn't come-our radios weren't working in the valley, so a group hiked to the top of the closest hill and tried again. Mac Ops told us that they were weathered in and no flights could get to us. We had two choices: make camp with the survival bags--ugh! Nasty freeze-dried food, tents, pads and sleeping bags that aren't all that great, and stoves that we were trained to use in Happy Camper School, OR, walk three and a half miles over a small mountainous or hilly terrain to New Harbor camp. We chose that option. Our weather was fine--so off we went. I felt it was tough going—others thought it was a walk in the park! I’m sure it was all a function of age and fitness level—guess which end of the spectrum I ended up on! You decide where on the spectrum you would have fallen. Some of the way was through snow that would break under your feet and end halfway up your calf--you'd have to pull your leg free. Then you'd be on large rocks that turned and twisted under your boots; then over small, pebbly surfaces that moved like sand and were hard to walk through. I preferred the larger boulders and hated the snow! I was carrying a heavy backpack and sweating as we crossed the last of the three hills (not quite "mountains" but enough elevation for me!).

But the walk was well worth it. We arrived at New Harbor about 10 PM. The camp was a double "jamesway", a curved canvas shelter with electricity, wooden flooring, tables, chairs, a gas stove and cots with blankets and pillows. It also had two large propane heaters, so we were toasty for most of the stay. There wasn't a lot of food, but we had hot chocolate, granola bars, and Ramen noodles--so not a bad deal at all. In the morning we found that some frozen food had been stored in a cold cellar, so we baked raspberry turn-overs and if we had had to stay longer, we also found bagels we could toast up.

The only difficulty was during the night. There were only five cots and eight people, so three slept on the floor or on tables. The cots weren’t exactly cushy, but I fell asleep fairly quickly just wishing for a toothbrush! In the middle of the night, my shivering woke me up, and I knew from survival training that your body is heading toward hypothermia if you don’t take steps to warm up. The propane heater had gone out, and I was closest to the outside wall. The cold air was sucking the heat out of my body from under the cot. I got up and folded a blanket to give me four layers under me, put my Big Red on, and found another blanket for my feet. I can’t say I was warm, but at least I wasn’t shivering anymore.

The next morning the weather was still bad in McMurdo and we had a low ceiling in the Dry Valleys, so we explored the sea ice and a small fishing hut that was located in the harbor. The sea ice is amazing. I think this is multi-year ice, so it is very thick, but it also had huge pressure ridges, cracks, and lots of sediment that has built up on the surface. While on the ice, we found a large seal that had pushed her nose through a dive hole, lifted off the cover that the divers had attached, and flopped down to take a nap in the sun. She was funny to watch. She’d lift her head and check us out, but it was obvious that she knew the redcoats were no threat because she plopped back down and went right back to sleep. Have you ever watched a dreaming dog with its paws running? Well, she, too, seemed to be dreaming as she flipped her tail and made little grunting noises. I’m not sure if it was a happy dream or a nightmare, but she was certainly busy!

Finally around noon, the ceiling lifted enough that a helo was able to go pick up our survival bags, about 100 pounds of rock samples we had collected, and then it came to get us.

Our eight-hour tour had ended up being a twenty-four hour “boondoggle.” When we arrived back in McMurdo, we were met with concerned looks over our “survival trial”—that is until they found out what a cushy setting we really had! So they wanted to know how ‘Gilligan’s Island’ really was, and although I thought we should have agreed upon a good story about facing the harsh Antarctic winds as we fought our way on foot across the mountains…we couldn’t help but just grin over our grand adventure!

Thanks Kate Pound and Joanna Hubbard for sharing your pictures! My camera was dropped about a week ago, and I am so grateful that you are taking so many great shots!

Kate Pound in front of the jamesways at the New Harbor field camp.
Joanna Hubbard

Beautiful Beacon Valley

2007-11-21T10:52:00.000+13:00

On Monday, we were lucky enough to take a field trip to the Dry Valley Specially Managed Area. We went in a helo up the Ferrar Valley, and were dropped at the head of Beacon Valley for a four hour wander, and were taken out again along the length of Taylor Valley, stopping for another chunk of time at the mouth of the valley by the Commonwealth glacier and stream. We had fairly mild to good conditions but before our helo could come pick us up and bring us home, McMurdo weathered in and we had to stay out overnight. Rather than break out our survival packs and make camp where we were, we hiked three miles to New Harbor field camp at the shore of McMurdo Sound where we had propane heaters, cots and blankets and an outhouse. We were picked up the next afternoon from our very cushy "survival" spot, no problem.

Beacon Valley is special for many reasons. One is the sheer distance to get to it, further than most of the commonly or easily visited Dry Valleys like Taylor or Wright. It is a wonderful place to see a large amount of Beacon supergroup sedimentary rock (around 400-230 million years old) and get up close to it. The Beacon supergroup is a very deep/thick series of sand and silt stone sediments deposited by water and later uplifted. I scrambled up a scree slope of eroded material to get to the steep cliffs of rocky outcropping and to a vertical section of dark Ferrar Dolorite (an igneous intrusion from around 180mya).

After getting a closer look at the large chunks that had fallen off the crumbly looking rock, I decided against going right up to the wall and touching the rocks. I got as high as I could on the unstable slope and sat to look out at the valley for awhile. I could hear the wind whistling past the irregular surface of the huge rock face, and nothing else. Really lovely after the hustle and bustle of McMurdo's 24/7 transportation hub noise. I couldn't sit too long, keeping moving there was important as it was chilly and windy even though the sun was partially out.

Another Dry Valley feature that is a little different in Beacon was more easily seen from the helo, the huge frost polygons on the valley floor, hard to recognize them on the ground, even when we were standing on them. Other areas we saw polygons had smaller ones. The ice underneath the polygons here in Beacon Valley is thought to be some of the oldest ice in the world somewhere between 7-14 million years old, scientists are sampling it to get ancient atmosphere.

Everyones attention was definitely attracted by the extreme wind weathering in action visible on every rock in the area to some degree. Many of the finely grained rocks have a satiny smooth texture and rounded edges that comes from being sandblasted by airborne sediment in the wind. There were pockets of this blasting material in the lee of most large rocks. Other rocks have been sculpted into strange, sinuous shapes by the same action, their softer areas being more vulnerable to abrasion.

What do you notice about the rocks from the Beacon Valley floor in this picture?

ANDRILL Open House

2007-11-20T12:45:00.002+13:00

I took this photo of the Ross Island cable TV channel that posts activities in McMurdo. As you can see, all the folks involved with ANDRILL hosted an Open House for the greater community to attend. It was a really great event. As one of my fellow ARISERS said, people appreciated the enthusiasm the scientists had for their particular area of expertise.

We teachers staffed the meet-and-great area of the open house where we shared activities that can, or are used in schools with students. Most of the activities we used were developed by LuAnn Dahlman, an ARISE teacher from last year as part of her Flexhibit. Thanks LuAnn

In the photo to the right, you can see some special people using the core drilling model Joanna and I put together to demonstrate the actual drilling process. The gentleman on the left is Dr. Peter Webb. He first started coming to Antarctica as a geology student mapping the area know as Wright Valley (I hope to be taking a field trip out there in the next couple of weeks) and has been a leader in geology research here ever since. You can learn more about him, his early adventures and the science he is still doing by viewing Megan Berg's latest video (video #3) at www.andrill.org/iceberg. The woman interviewing him is Moira Rankin who produces stories for Sound Print Media. Her stories are picked up by some NPR stations. Her sound technician is Jarred.

Once a group of ten or so guests had assembled, ANDRILL scientists and staff led visitors on tours of the labs to see all the work that is being done as part of this very complex project. In this photo, Dr. David Harwood is getting a group together for a tour. We had some great feedback from some of the 150 or so guests that it was a tremendous afternoon. I wish everyone I know could have stopped in too.

Good Question Mrs. Miller!

2007-11-19T19:14:00.000+13:00

In a comment posted, Mrs. Miller asked me what three things I'll miss once I leave the ice to head back home in a little over two weeks. Hmmm. Let me think about that for a moment...

One thing I'll miss is the novelty of being here. There seems to be something everyday that makes me stop and think, "Wow! I'm in Antarctica!!" When I step out the door in the morning and the cold wind bites my nose I think, how cool- I'm in Antarctica! At brunch on Sundays the first thing I put on my plate is several slices of fresh watermelon. And then I think, "Wow, I'm eating fresh watermelon and I'm in Antarctica!!" And after being in the science camp for a couple of weeks the temperatures started to climb as the sun climbed in the sky and stopped setting at night. Sleeping in sleeping bags in tents, you would think would be really cold, but I found I was too warm at night and had to unzip my sleeping bag to let some heat out. I thought to myself, "my gosh I'm camping in Antarctica and I'm too hot!!! How crazy is that?" These novelties, I will greatly miss.

The breathtaking scenery is another thing I'll miss. McMurdo station isn't a very pretty town, but even the view from the library in the Crary science building is beautiful and it's a great spot to watch the weather changes roll in. From there we look out across from Ross Island to the Transantarctic Mountains and see several glaciers. I took this photo yesterday from the Library windows. In the foreground you can see four planes out on the sea ice runway with the mountains in the background. The area where our camp was (the coordinates for our camp: 77 degrees south, 163 degrees east) was even more striking. I took this photo from our camp. Even though the mountains in that area are only 6,000 ft. I loved watching the light change and to see how it affected the way the mountains looked. I'll never forget that place.

I think the third thing I'll miss is all the really cool science that is being done here and the enthusiasm of the scientists conducting this important research. ANDRILL is just one of many projects here. I know of at least four projects being done on Mt. Erebus- the nearby active volcano, at least three projects involving seal research, two penguin projects, numerous benthic communities research groups, and several involving glacier research. I also know of other projects using GPS surveying sea ice stability and countless atmospheric and astronomical projects. Its great to have the chance to meet these scientists and see the enthusiasm they have for their specialties. All these groups give lectures in the evenings and I've attended as many as I'm able to. I've learned SO MUCH!! And being able to call myself an active participant in this science community makes me feel like the luckiest person I know of. Actually, I need to finish this blog so I can get to a lecture on the new British Antarctic Survey station, Halley VI, to be constructed over the next couple of years.

Thanks for your great question, Mrs. Miller. Say hello to your second grade class for me. I'll be sure to stop in for a visit as soon as I get back to Delaware in a few weeks.

Tools of the Trade

2007-11-16T22:32:00.000+13:00

The science teams here use lots of different tools while examining the core, some simple, some very complex. By far the most commonly used items are magnifying lenses of all types and lab or science notebooks. White wax pencils, probes and flags are all used to mark the core, and meter sticks are used to find the precise location of a sample.

Besides the already described tools used by the curators to take samples (see Core Curating, Nov 9), lots of smear slides and thin section slides are made from samples of the core. Smear slides involve scraping a tiny bit of sediment from the core with a pick and spreading it very thin in water on a glass microscope slide. Thin sections are a very thin slice of rock attached by strong glue to a glass microscope slide and then ground down until there is barely any left. Many specialized tools are used in this whole process (more details to come in a future blog!) including the one shown here, pressing the rock onto the slide as the glue dries to make an even bond. Once we have all these slides, we need lots of microscopes to look at them.

One very important tool we use to gather data is the high quality scanner that takes a very detailed picture of the face of the core once it is split. This information is entered into a computer program called Corelyzer that everyone can access. We have lots of computers and our own ANDRILL drive that everyone can access and upload information to share. Another important computer program used is PSICAT- it creates a graphical record of all the core characteristics as they are logged, cm by cm.

There are other scanning machines that don't take pictures but instead make measurements of various features of the core. This one, at the drill site, measures the core density, its velocity (how quickly a sound wave travels through the core), its infrared emmissions, and magnetic susceptibility (how magnetized the core is in response to a magnetic field).

What tools do you use on a regular or daily basis? What specialized tools do you use for a particular purpose? Are there tools that would be useful to you that you do not have?

Stepping Back in Time: Discovery Hut

2007-11-16T20:55:00.000+13:00

Just outside of McMurdo on Hut Point Peninsula sits Robert Falcon Scott’s ‘Discovery Hut.’ Scott was a British naval officer who led two memorable expeditions to Antarctica. Discovery Hut was built during his first expedition in 1901-1904. (and you thought my 2 ½ months in Antarctica was a long time!) During this expedition Scott achieved the record for reaching the furthest point south at 82°17’. He also explored the Ross Sea area and discovered the Dry Valleys. (The Dry Valleys are the 2% of Antarctica that has no snow or ice cover and has had virtually no precipitation in the last 15 million years. This is where I was camped in 2002.)
Looking toward Cape Evans from the hill above the hut, you can imagine
watching Scott’s party trudging over the ice and snow to get to this depot.

During Scott’s second expedition to Antarctica, his goal was to reach the South Pole. His ship became icebound, but most of his crew lived on board and only used the huts at Cape Evans and Hut Point Peninsula as a staging base and storage facility.
It is generally so cold in Antarctica that there is very little decomposition.
This is a mummified seal on top of some canvas left outside of the hut by
Scott’s men. The seal is probably a century old!

It was this second expedition from 1910-1912, that is the most famous and also the most tragic of his stories. Scott and his men set out to be the first to reach the South Pole, man-hauling their sledges loaded with supplies. They survived fierce winds and storms, but were buoyed by the knowledge that they were approaching the South Pole. Using their sextant, they calculated the exact point and upon reaching it, instead of a joyous celebration of conquest, they were met by a rock cairn and the Norwegian flag. By just a month, Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the prize. The defeat was disheartening, and the men faced another 800 mile treacherous journey back to their ship.

Some historians have questioned Scott’s leadership. On his earlier expedition, several men suffered from scurvy, a disease that as a naval officer he was keenly aware. Another questionable decision was that the men had collected rock samples for scientific studies, but they continued to haul them, even as they grew weaker and weaker. The group was on the verge of starvation; many became ill; they were besieged by frostbite. Two men died on the journey back, and then a fierce storm forced the last three to hunker down in their tent, and eventually they all succumbed to starvation and the elements. The saddest part of the tale is that they were just a mere dozen or so miles from the hut and their ship. Scott wrote, "Our luck in weather is preposterous...the conditions simply horrible". The truth of the matter is that Scott’s team did endure terrible, unusual weather for that time of the year, and that bad luck probably did play a large role in the sad outcome.

The supplies are left in the hut pretty much as they were when Scott and his men were here. There were times that you expected one of these heroic explorers to step around the canvas curtain hanging in the center of the room and greet us.

Instead, I peeked through the curtain!
On the other side of the curtain was the cooking space, so I tried my hand at cooking.

Would you like a little New Zealand lamb for dinner?
We found it hanging in the food storage room. Not exactly
fresh meat now that a century has past!

I had to put this picture in of Hunter's Oatmeal--this is for my son, Hunter!

Back from Field Camp

2007-11-16T16:42:00.000+13:00

Actually, I've been back in McMurdo for almost a week now. I've been a little busy doing laundry and catching up with some other project work, but I finally have a moment to post some photographs from my last days in Granite Harbor.

Sunday, the temperature reached the melting point. 32 degrees feels REALLY warm here in Antarctica! I had a few spare moments to soak up some sun, after applying spf 70 sunscreen (don't forget that were living under the hole in the ozone layer down here). I spent most of the rest of Sunday collecting all of my smelly wool socks and tracking down my missing glove to pack for my return trip. I felt really sad about leaving my camp buddies and the beautiful scenery, but I was also really looking forward to a shower and clean clothes.

The first of two helicopters arrived at camp exactly on time at 2:20 carrying two ARISE educators- Robin and Ken. You might have read Robin's blog about hurting her back and the disappointment of not going out to camp with me. Robin and Ken are replacing me and Bob. I had a little bit of time to show them around camp while the helicopter went to get a sling load of fuel to resupply the camp. We climbed aboard when it came back- just in time because fog was rolling down off the glaciers.

The trip back was incredible. We flew over many icebergs. As they calve off glaciers they float out into the Ross sea and then get frozen into the sea ice during Antarctic winter.

I've been busy in my new role now helping out in the core lab. It's fun work, but also very important to the scientists. Read Joanna's blog titled Core Curating from 11/09 to get the details.

Armitage Trail and message to Josh C: "Break a Leg"

2007-11-15T23:34:00.000+13:00

This evening (Thursday, Antarctica) a group of us walked over to Scott Base (green buildings), and then we walked on a flagged trail (called the Armitage Trail) which runs for 5 miles over the sea ice back to McMurdo.

It was beautiful, and a wonderful break - we had been working really hard all day getting ready for the ANDRILL 'Open House' at Crary lab this coming weekend.

On the way I took several pictures, and one of my fellow walkers took the video below - it is a good luck message to my son Josh, who is in his School play, which opens tomorrow (Thursday)! I hope it goes well Josh!

Ms. Theilen - First Grade, Talahi

2007-11-15T23:16:00.000+13:00

These are answers to questions asked by students in Ms. Theilen's class at Talahi Community School in St. Cloud, Minnesota

Where do you sleep at night?

We sleep in dorms. They are large 2-storey buildings. We are lucky because we are in 2-person rooms (some people have 4 or 5 to a room I gather). There is a bathroom (toilets and showers are down the hallway), and a laundry room with washers and dryers down the hall. These pictures show the outside of the dorm and the inside of my dorm room, which I share with Louise Huffman. When we did ‘Happy Camper’ School I slept (not much!) in a Scott Tent (see my Happy Camper blog). The people that are working at the drillsite sleep at the drill camp, which is just next to the drillsite. They have ‘rooms’ built into containers, they have little ‘portholes’ for windows – take a very close look at the picture.

Why is Antarctica a desert?
See the blog I posted yesterday – and email me more questions if you have any; also check out this web page on Antarctic Desert and Tundra.

Is all of Antarctica a desert?
There are a few places on the Antarctic Peninsula that get more rain than places at the center of the continent (go to and check out average rainfall and temperature for the coastal locations, especially Palmer Station); they are a bit warmer, and are closer to the ocean, and is impacted by storms that carry more moisture. There are a variety of research projects that examine the ecology of specific areas. There is some really exciting current research on algae and other microscopic life forms that are living in the extreme environments in Antarctica; researchers have recognized areas they have termed the Marielandia Antarctic Desert and Maudlandia Antarctic Desert; thses areas are identified as Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, because of their unique fauna.

Is there more snow or ice (in Antarctica)?
This is an interesting question. What happens is that the snow at the surface gradually turns to ice, so that there is often a thin veneer of snow at the surface (unless it has been blown away by wind which is quite common), that covers the ice below.

How do you decide where to drill?
This is a complicated question to answer. Basically we use information we have from two areas. First we use information from the few other places in the Ross sea area that have been drilled – these tell us what sediment layers there are there. We also use information from what we call seismic surveys. These surveys send out waves of energy, the energy waves bounce off some of the sediment layers beneath McMurdo Sound, and help us know how thick the layers are, and where they get thicker of thinner. Because we want to drill through a particular set of layers, we use both of these pieces of information to select the drill site. Two of our ARISE team are out on a seismic survey at the moment. Check out Julia’s blogs - she just got back from the seismic survey.

Does it snow a lot?
No it does not snow much. As you have learned, the definition of a desert is that it receives ~250 mm (about 10 inches) of rain (or rain equivalent) a year. We get closer to a maximum of 125 mm (5 inches) a year here at McMurdo. The tricky thing is that the winds (which can be REALLY strong) usually blow snow around, so even if it isn’t actually snowing, it feels as though it is, and it becomes ‘white-out’ conditions because of the blowing snow. The snow rarely melts – although I did notice a few patches of melting snow around the dark volcanic rocks as I went on a walk today. We can see storms arriving when we see clouds of blowing snow moving towards us from the southwest.

What kind of food do you eat?
We eat in a large central building called “The Galley” or “Building 155”. It is just like a school cafeteria (except the food is much better – the baker here is awesome). Everyone just puts their coats in the ‘coat bays’, and goes in to the cafeteria (washing their hands on the way - see Joanna’s blog).

We collect trays, plates and glasses, just like in any cafeteria, then we sit down at a table to eat. Here you see me sitting down to eat with Phill and Bob. Robin took these pictures. At breakfast there is cereal, some cooked breakfast, and an option of having an omlette of some kind. There is also canned fruit, yogurt, juices, and hot drinks.

At lunch there is a variety of hot meal options, plus bread and soup, and there is a sandwich bar. There are also yummy desserts (not to be confused with deserts). Dinner is the same.

There is also a meal called ‘Mid-Rats’ - it is a ‘lunch’ for nightshift people. On Sundays we have a brunch – it is my favorite meal, because they usually (as long as a plane has come in) have fresh fruit and cheese, with foccacia. They also have other hot items, and waffles at brunch.

What kinds of things have you found in the drilling?
We have found all sorts of sedimentary rocks. Some of them are sediments called diamictites – these were deposited by glaciers. Other sediments we have found are just like beach sands. We have also found fine sediments that have diatoms (microfossils) in them – these are called Diatomites.

Are you ready for a MCI?

2007-11-15T11:20:00.000+13:00

On our first evening in McMurdo, fresh off the C-17, one of the papers handed to us was a form to volunteer to be a part of the MCI Auxillary team and places to list prior medical training. MCI stands for mass casualty incident - any accident creating more casualties than our local McMurdo hospital can handle, overwhelming the standard local resources. Here, three people with major injuries would actually qualify as an MCI as our hospital only has the full facilities to treat two people with serious injuries.

Last week some of the hospital staff held a series of trainings for those who had volunteered to be a part of the MCI auxilliary teams. One day was an orientation to the teams, firehouse location, and gear. In MCI situations, we would be using the firehouse as a staging area to have adequate indoor space. There are trunks of emergency medical and first aid gear stored there as well as stashes of blankets and other useful items. On two other days we met at the hospital to review emergency treatments, Antarctica-specific issues, and try practice scenarios. Besides the talented staff of doctors and nurses, and the emergency skills of the fire department folks, there are lots of people with helpful emergency medical backgrounds in the general community. The volunteers have everything from EMT certifications, to nursing degrees, to Wilderness First Responder certifications and Search and Rescue or Ski Patrol experience. There are also a group of people who have volunteered to be recorders, one for each patient, keeping track of their vital statistics, medications given, evaluations made, actions taken, treatment given, etc.

We are divided into Red, Yellow, and Green teams according to which group of injured people we would be helping. The same color system is used to give a rating of how seriously each person is injured. Someone who can move themselves around, only needs basic first aid and is stable would be in green. A person with more serious or multiple injuries but whose condition isn't currently life-threatening, who can respond to caregivers, and who can wait awhile for successful treatment would be in yellow. Someone in red is unlikely to be coherent and needs major medical assistance immediately. These colors indicate the patient's priority for medical care. Depending on evaluation and what happens to a patient over time, a patient might move between these categories.

Aircraft represent one of the likliest sources of large numbers of injured people here. This is one of the reasons that such careful weather observations and conservative safety decisions are made. A complicating factor in any MCI will of course be the cold weather and exposure any injured people would be subjected to.

Many large organizations like the Anchorage School District or the Municipality of Anchorage have plans in place of how they might deal with various emergency scenarios that might occur in their area. What types of large scale emergencies could reasonably happen in the area where you live? What might you and your class (or family) be able to do now to be better prepared for these?

Antarctica is a Desert

2007-11-15T00:12:00.000+13:00

This is a question I got from Children in Room 133 at Talahi Community School:

“We are studying deserts this week. We heard that Antarctica might be considered a desert! Can you tell us about this?”

Antarctica is indeed a desert, in fact it is the largest desert (about 14.2 million square kilometers in size) on planet Earth. Specifically it is a cold desert. This may surprise many people, because people usually think of deserts as being hot, like the Sahara Desert (just over 9 million square kilometers), but that does not have to be the case. Deserts are defined as regions that have less than 254 mm (10 inches) of precipitation per year. Precipitation means water that can fall as rain, sleet, hail or snow.

Another definition of a desert is ‘an area where there is a greater rate of evaporation than precipitation (rain, hail or snow)’. Because the average temperature in Antarctica is typically below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), combined with the fact that cold air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air, it is usually too cold for precipitation to occur.

In the interior of the Antarctic Continent the average annual precipitation (snowfall is recalculated at its “water equivalent”) is only about 50 mm (about 2 inches). The amount of precipitation does increase towards the coasts, but it is still only about 200 mm (8 in). Air over Antarctica is generally too cold to hold water vapor – so there is very little evaporation. This means that when snow does fall in Antarctica, it usually stays there – or gets blown around, and it eventually accumulates over hundreds and thousands of years into thick ice sheets, like the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the East Antarctic Ice sheet.

I have noticed the really strong winds that typically come from the south. What I have noticed is that the winds are usually blowing snow, which makes it look as though it may be snowing, but it isn’t. The ever-present winds pick up snow that has already fallen and move it around from place to place, producing ‘white-out’ conditions, which would constitute a ‘Condition 1’ in McMurdo-speak. What I have noticed is that I can tell when the snow around McMurdo has just been blown around, because it usually has a slightly brown color; this is because it has picked up lots of tiny grains of silt or mud (‘rock dust’) from the rocks that are sticking up above the ice and snow, and carried it with the blowing snow, then dropped them with the snow when the winds died down.

In fact, I was helping take some core boxes down to the helo pad one day, and we were also taking some big yellow buckets down there. Apparently the people out at the drillsite had noticed all the windblown dust with the snow, and they wanted to collect some, because they were curious about how much there was, and what the composition of the particles was. I’ll have to ask them how they set the giant buckets up to collect the wind-blown dust, and find out whether they have managed to collected dusty particles.

By the way, I went for a very nice short walk this evening part way around Observation Hill. It was one of the calmest (wind-free!) evenings we have had since I have been here.

Snow Day from 11/08/07

2007-11-13T17:35:00.000+13:00

Snow Day- 11/8

The weather wasn’t very good for doing science yesterday. The crew went out for a bit, but had to come back to came when snow started to fall making visibility a problem. Dr. Marv Speece entertained us in the afternoon with a lecture on geophysics. We went to bed last night with fluffy snowflakes falling through still air. Sometime around three this morning the wind started howling so that the tents were all flapping frantically. Needless to say, no data collection again today. It’s hard to tell if it’s currently snowing or are the 20+ mph winds just blowing the fluff that fell yesterday. Current temperature is around 17F, positive numbers thank goodness. Anyway, it’s hard to see much except shades of white and gray, and even more difficult to function outside for very long.

Our chief, Dr. Ross Powell, Glacial Sedimentologist from Northern Illinois University, continued our lecture series on glaciers in the science tent. Ross first visited Antarctica in the 70’s as a graduate student and has been here numerous times since then. He’s been particularly interested in the Mackay glacier over the last ten years and is very keen to get some good sediment records showing up on our seismic survey. On days that we’re working at the survey site, his primary responsibility is supervising the data collection process and pondering the great complexities of glacier behavior.

Today’s lecture focused on different types of glaciers, their behaviors and sediment records based on climatic differences, and how that all relates to future climate changes. I asked Ross to explain what we’re all doing here in Granite Harbor and gave him a two paragraph maximum.

Ross says, “On the continental shelf around Antarctica are some very deep troughs and basins that were scoured and eroded out when the ice sheet was much larger and expanded over those areas. Since the ice sheet last started to shrink and retreat, some of those troughs and basins, which can reach over 900 meters below sea level, have been special repositories for marine sediment. Ocean currents have carried and concentrated sediment in the basins so that it accumulates very rapidly, at a rate of several millimeters every decade. Because these basins have been exposed and have been receiving this sediment over the past 20,000 to 7,000 years as the ice sheet retreated and opened-up the continental shelf, thick accumulations of these geologically very young sediments has been stored in the basins, some now reaching up to 200 meters thick. These thick piles of sediments are made mainly of the remains of marine plants or algae named diatoms that form the basis of the food web in the highly productive Southern Ocean. These marine plants need sunlight and a good supply of nutrients from the water to flourish; some even like living in sea ice that forms every winter around Antarctica by sea water freezing. Nutrients are best provided by strong winds blowing across the water surface causing deep waters that carry the nutrients to rise up to the surface where the diatoms live.

What we want to do is core one of these types of sediment records that now lie at the bottom of the Mackay Sea Valley, and look for periods of time in the core when diatoms were flourishing and when they weren’t, going back over the last 7,000 years. Other types of sediment accumulate when diatoms are not abundant, because waters are either less nutritious or perhaps were covered with very thick sea ice cutting down on the sunlight reaching the upper seawater layer. These types of records can tell us a great deal about the ocean circulation changes over time, which we want to understand, and compare those changes in Antarctica with what has happened in lower latitudes such as around New Zealand and even in tropical waters closer to the equator. We need to understand how these ocean waters in different areas of the world are linked to each other, so we can better predict how they may change as global warming continues. It is especially important for Antarctica because of the possibility of all of its ice melting as Earth continues to warm.”

Thank you very much, Ross!

Antarctic AAA from 11/06/07

2007-11-13T17:12:00.000+13:00

Antarctic AAA

So imagine yourself cruising along in your plush Pisten Bully over the beautiful, aqua-blue sea ice enjoying the spectacular scenery of Granite Harbor on a lovely spring day. All of a sudden, you realize something is really wrong with your vehicle. There’s no power. The engine sputters and then goes silent. What do you do? Back home you might get out your cell phone and call a good friend or family member that knows about cars, or a favorite mechanic, or if you’ve paid for the service- call AAA to come and check out the problem. But what do you do if you’re in the middle of Antarctica?

Unfortunately, we’ve had this problem come up here at camp. Antarctica’s harsh environment is tough even on vehicles that were meant to work in very cold, snowy conditions. One of the Pisten Bullys seems to have an ongoing mechanical problem. It could be battery problems, faulty wiring, or even computer malfunctions. Our field party includes a couple of very handy guys, Andrew and Kyle, that seem to me like the kind of guys that could fix most anything, but not being that familiar with Pisten Bullys they had to call in some help. Instead of a cell phone, the camp manager got on the walkie talkie to MAC Ops- the signal bounced from the transmitter on top of nearby Mt. Brooke and picked up in McMurdo Station 100 miles south. MAC Ops transferred the call to the mechanics shop and in hardly any time, Josh Knopik and Branden Thorpe were on their way out to our camp by helicopter.

This was actually Josh and Branden’s second visit to our camp and we’re all old friends now. Josh is here from Minnesota for his second season, but probably won’t be back next year because he’s hoping to be in graduate school. His background is in environmental studies with interest in ecology and geology. This is Branden’s first year here. He’s from Silver Spring, Maryland and is a diesel mechanic back home. They’re great guys and seem to work well together. They even fixed the camp generator that had just conked out. The weather took a nasty turn back in McMurdo and the helicopters were grounded so Josh and Branden stayed overnight and enjoyed Joan’s great cooking.

So far the Pisten Bully is running fine. After looking through the manufacturer’s brochures that the guys had with them, I’m wondering if these vehicles are designed for lighter use than what our group is putting them through.

Camp Cuisine from 11/7/07

2007-11-13T13:37:00.001+13:00

Camp Cuisine

11/07

I just hung up from an Iridium phone call back home with a very dear friend of my mine who was concerned that we might not be eating very well out here at camp. I could tell him that we’ve been having excellent food, which made me think I’ve been remiss in describing that part of camp life for you.

Our camp cook is Joan. She lives in Wyoming when she is “home”. We’ve become good tentmates and enjoy the infrequent quiet afternoons at camp when we can wash our hair. I’ve noticed the dinners over the last few days have become much more interesting to the palate, rather than just being good food that fills you up. Joan said she’s feeling much more in her element and in a creative mood now that we’ve really settled in. After earning her degree in geology, Joan began her culinary training in Philadelphia. She’s had many interesting experiences since then including outdoor education instructor and being a ranch hand. Cooking and the outdoors seem to be recurring themes. Joan said, “Cooking is a way to go places, because everyone needs to eat.” Brandon and Josh, the mechanics that joined us for dinner last night will attest that we don’t just eat, we’re Dining.

I wish I had taken a photo of last night’s dinner. Sautéed chicken breasts with sundried tomatoes and mozzarella, accompanied by tortellini with pesto and lovely green beans. Joan made a beautiful presentation. Tonight’s menu, Thai green curry with chicken and shrimp. The tangy aromas are making me very hungry as I sit here writing, maybe I should move over to the science tent instead!

I’m amazed by Joan’s creations given what she has to work with.

The outside photo shows the refrigerator/ freezer, or as Joan calls it, the “grocery store”. Photos inside the kitchen show the inside food stores and the stove/work surface. And of course, a very happy Joan after we all enjoyed her Thai curry. (p.s. It was REALLY good!!!! )

This reviewer gives restaurant Granite Harbor G-049, a four star rating. Reservations suggested.

Diatom Ice

2007-11-13T13:11:00.000+13:00

It's the afternoon of November 13th. I'm back in McMurdo and very happy to finally post blogs I wrote last week. This is one is from November 3rd.

So, I noticed when we first started shooting off the air cannon to conduct the seismic survey, some of the ice that came up with the sea water and air bubbles looked it was formed from root beer. Here’s a more scientific description: irregularly shaped chunks of translucent ice ranging in size from approximately three to eight inches in length with mottled internal yellowish brown coloring. I know from the scientists here with ANDIRLL that the coloring is colonies of diatoms. Diatoms are plants that are about the size of the head of a pin and are made of silica (a sand-like substance). Most of the diatom ice slides back into the hole with the receding sea water when the air gun ceases firing. Hopefully, the diatoms go on living and no harm done.

One morning when we arrived at the survey line to begin our day, I noticed a chunk of diatom ice on the surface of the area of the last hole we shot from the afternoon before. It had sat out in the bright sunshine all night. Instead of the usual brownish color I’ve become used to, it was a lovely shade of green. I took a photo of it lying on the aqua colored sea ice with the toes of my “bunny boots” (seriously, that’s what these boots are called-why, I don’t know!) to prove to everyone that Antarctica isn’t only shades of white.

Here’s a science question for you; why was it green now and not still brownish? Why is that important? To test my hypothesis of why that happened, I collected some other pieces of brown diatom ice and left them out in the sun by the last hole of the day. My prediction was that they would be green the next day. My prediction was correct. When we came back the next morning they were green. For comparison I collected another piece of brown diatom ice and photographed them next to each other. The brown ice is the piece on the left.

So, what’s happening with the diatom ice? And why is it important?

A Visit to the SMS Drill Site

2007-11-11T13:53:00.000+13:00

Imagine driving along over sea ice in an oversnow vehicle for 2 hours - through magnificent scenery and vast emptiness,
and then suddenly, off in the distance, you see a flash of color and a white object sticking up out of the surface of the ice. You drive a bit further and the scene comes into view: it is a remote camp for 30 hearty souls, with a 90 ton drillrig, sitting atop 8 meters of ice. Cutting edge science research is being done right here in this remote, isolated spot. It is the ANDRILL Southern McMurdo Sound (SMS) Project Drill Site.

Why did they select this particular location?

Prior to site selection for a drill hole such as this, a great deal of effort went into understanding the regional geology. This SMS drillsite location was selected based on a combination of prior drilling projects, which revealed a great deal about the basin into which these sediments were being deposited, as well as seismic surveys, which told scientists a great deal about the geometry of the basin and stratigraphy (or layering) of rocks beneath the sea floor. Information from prior drilling projects also gave us information on age and depositional environments of some of these rocks. Based on these combined data, a the SMS Drill Site was selected to drill through sediments ranging from modern deposits back in time to perhaps as old as 34 million years. The site is approximately 30 miles from McMurdo, too great a distance to "commute" daily. So an entire camp was built for a team of 30 drillers and scientists, who work in two 12-hour shifts, 7 days per week, to get the drilling done while the sea ice is still sufficiently frozen. The target depth is 1,000 meters below the sea floor. We are currently at 635 meters, and going strong. What a thrill it was to see the drill and the camp in action!

To get to the drill site, we drove in Ford trucks, equipped with tracks rather than wheels. There is a flagged route out to the site, which took us along the whole length of the ice runway, on which a C-17 landed while we were driving parallel to it!
We then veered off toward the SMS site across the long expanse of sea ice, occasionally stopping to photograph some remarkable features and sights along the way. These bulging patches of blue ice are apparently melt pools which, when re-frozen, they expanded, resulting in mounds of blue ice dotting the otherwise snowy white sea ice surface.

After 2 hours, we had crossed a good distance of the sea ice covering McMurdo Sound, and were close to the glaciers flowing out from the Central Transantarctic Mountains. The views of the mountains were quite spectacular!

From a half hour out, we could see the drill rig poking up out of the ice, and the blue boxes which comprise most of the SMS living quarters. Upon our arrival, we were given a tour of the drill and all of its workings. The mast of the drill rig is 20 meters high!This massive structure, including the portions above and below the water, weighs 90 tons. Imagine that much weight sitting on the sea ice...

While I was there, a section of core was pulled up - from 620 m of depth. Four drillers were working together to operate the rig, mix the muds that are sent down into the hole to help bring up the core, and to person the many controls. When the core was brought up out of the hole, another team came to retrieve it, and immediately set to work recording information about the core - including a full scan of the core, a logging of all the fractures - both natural and drilling-induced, and physical property information. To learn more about the technology behind the drill rig, see http://www.andrill.org/technology/rig.

After our tour of the drill rig, we toured the living quarters for the 30 people who live at the drill site. The camp includes a kitchen, galley, bedrooms, equipment rooms, and a recreation room for the SMS Drilling Team. It was incredibly cozy and comfortable - I understood why people looked so happy out there!

As we drove back, blue sky was starting to emerge from behind the clouds. Mount Erebus finally came into view, as did the distant volcanic peaks from across McMurdo Sound. This all bodes well - as it gives me hope that the nice weather will continue, and I will fly out to join the Mackay Sea Valley Seismic Survey tomorrow. If all goes well, that is where I am headed. I will be out in the field until close to the end of November, so my blog will be quiet for awhile. Please check out the blogs of my colleagues! I will be back in touch in a couple of weeks.

Ciao!

Core Curating

2007-11-09T11:22:00.000+13:00

We are at the halfway point of our time here, which means all the educators will soon be switching job assignments. Kate Pound and I have been working with the curatorial team - Simon Nielsen, Stacie Blair, and Ted Bibby on the day shift. Our job is to log and take the samples from the core requested by the various scientists each day at the core tour. There are many steps involved in doing it properly and it can take quite a long time. We have had as many as 248 samples on one day from 24 meters of PQ size core.

A day of sampling actually starts at the morning 9:30am all ANDRILL meeting when Chris Fielding shares the overview of the new sections of core described overnight by the stratigraphy team. Then we all troop down to the lab for the core tour, led by one of the sedimentologists-Greg Browne, Steve Pekar or Kari Bassett. They highlight features that they believe might be of interest to the various discipline groups and begin to talk about what interpretations might be made from the core.

The core is then available for the scientists to place their sample flags at areas of interest. Sometimes there are areas that are of high interest to many groups, leading to very dense flags and sampling. Then smear slide samples are taken by the diatomists followed at 12:00 by the paleomag team taking their little round samples. At 1:30 the curatorial team starts taking the remainder of the samples.

The first step is to record the core interval of each sample and which investigator requested it in the computer. From this database we print labels for the sample bags. Depending on the hardness of the sediment, we take the samples with scoops, knives, or a dimond bladed rock saw. Each sample gets its own specially labled bag which goes into the box for that scientist. Some samples are taken for scientists who are working in Italy, Germany, or the US and will have to be shipped off the ice to them.

After the samples have been taken, the empty holes are filled in with styrofoam to keep the core in good shape. Then it is sprayed down with water to keep it from getting too brittle, double wrapped in plastic and taped securely. These wrapped sections will be stored in the core freezer in their labeled, waxy, cardboard boxes until it is time to ship them back to Florida State University.

What information do you include in your notebook when you take a scientific sample? What might you need to know later about that sample?

Sending My Message Home

2007-11-08T16:33:00.000+13:00

Two nights ago the Today Show did its second "Live Broadcast" from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Anchorwoman Ann Curry was reporting on the United States Antarctic Program, as well as about life in Antarctica. Though the program appeared in the U.S. on Tuesday morning, it was the wee hours of Wednesday morning here in McMurdo. At this particular filming, McMurdo residents were welcome to come with signs and send greetings and messages to the folks back home.

We were asked not to arrive before 2:00 am. Kate, Louise and I never went to bed. We worked until about midnight, and then we found cardboard and made signs to hold up. Unlike my art supplies back home, the Crary Laboratory is quite barren of creative materials. By midnight, the Craft Shop had long since closed, and I had to make do with just a few markers and scrap cardboard. But I persevered, and came up with two signs back to back: one to my family, and one to the students of Ann Arbor Public Schools who have been following along on my ANDRILL journey. I would be prepared if the camera looked my way!

I wondered about how many people would show up at 2:00 am on a cold, windy night in Antarctica. Few would be as crazy as I was...I figured maybe 20 or 30 would appear. However, by 2:02 the hordes of people approaching the "Chalet" (the administrative offices for the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic Program) proved my estimate to be far off. I greatly underestimated the heartiness of the McMurdo Community. I would guess that 120 people showed up - nearly 10% of the McMurdo population - to freeze for an hour in order to wave to the folks back home!

It was a festive, chatty crowd, and we responded well to Ann Curry and crew who told us when to cheer and wave, and when to stand silently behind, with nothing but the noise of our teeth chattering. Ann Curry and her crew all got their directions from the New York office, and they would pass them on to us.

By 2:40 the first segment was over . Ann said we could go home to bed (or back to work for those people on night shift), or we could come inside the chalet and warm up – and then come out for the second segment in 20 minutes. I opted to stay. I welcomed the opportunity to warm up and hobnob with the NBC folks. In 15 minutes, having started to thaw, I went back outside. People were gathering around a small band which was going to play a number on the next segment. I grabbed my sign and joined them. This time I was up front – and held my sign proudly in front of me: I had a lot of people to say hello to! When the band played, I welcomed the chance to swing and dance and get the blood moving through my body. Every few seconds I turned my sign around hoping that both my family and Ann Arbor Public Schools would see my messages. It was a short dance, but a very spirited one!

When the music stopped, the party was over. By now the temperature was well below zero, and the time was close to 3:30 am. Sign still in hand, I bid goodnight to Ann and walked through the 3:30 am daylight to my dorm, climbed into bed, and shivered myself to sleep.

By morning I had 17 emails from friends and colleagues telling me that they had seen me on National TV. “You were the one in the red parka!”

Of course, everyone was the one in the red parka. Including Ann! But a few of you DID see my sign, one side or the other, dancing with the band. That was me sending my best wishes from Antarctica!

All for now. Over and out.

Biscuit with your tea?

2007-11-07T10:24:00.000+13:00

The cracking or faulting of the core in the drilling and splitting process is to be expected and doesn't significantly interfere with the information that can be learned from the core. Another phenomena that can be caused by drilling is different. Biscuiting is the term that refers to what happens when the core sticks in the drill barrel and, instead of holding steady while the drill turns around it, spins with the drill. Somewhat like a piece of wood turned on a lathe, the spinning section is incised with circular grooves and rounded and smoothed at the surface where the section of core that is spinning meets a section of core that is not. Look at the top of the section in the photo to the left. Here the harder sediments were shaped and the softer sediment above was turned into a little flattened cookie of sediment. That is where the name comes from, a biscuit is the Brit/Aussie/Kiwi term for a cookie.

Biscuiting can be more subtle in areas of sediment that are only deformed or stressed by the turning pressure of the drill barrel around them. A repeated spin doesn't always happen so the scientists have to look closely at any area of softer sediment to make sure they are seeing evidence of geological features rather than drilling created artifacts. The picture on the right shows another way biscuiting can look. The middle section has had drilling muds infiltrate it as well as twisting. Drilling mud generally flows around the core between the liner and the barrel, but can seep in to the edges of the core, especially in soft sediment. We don't want to include drilling muds (used to lubricate and clear the drill of debris) in geochemical analysis so when we are in that type of sediment, samples will not include material all the way to the edge of the core. We also have a record of the chemical makeup of the muds throughout the drilling process that could be referenced if someone needed to check for mud contamination of their samples.

What other examples of circular turning objects can you think of? Do all of them use some type of liquid to lubricate and reduce friction?

Paleomagnetism Studies on the ANDRILL Core

2007-11-07T03:01:00.000+13:00

Paleomagnetism, one of the many different geologic studies being done on the ANDRILL core, is the study of the record of Earth’s magnetic field through time. This record is captured in magnetic minerals which align themselves with Earth's magnetic field, (the geomagnetic field), as they are deposited in sedimenatary rocks.

Paleomagnetists have discovered that the earth’s magnetic field changes in two ways. First, the geomagnetic field is varying a little bit all the time. As a result, the magnetic north is constantly changing. Mainly it varies about the true north pole, which is the location about which Earth spins. These variations are small compared to the second type of change in the geomagnetic field: geomagnetic polarity reversals.

During a geomagnetic polarity reversals, the geomagnetic north moves to the geographic south pole. This happens over a
relatively short period of time as a result of changing electric currents and thermal convection in the molten outer core of the earth. The precise timing of these reversals is well documented around the earth back to 350 million years.

Paleomagnetists use the magnetic information in rocks to help date the rocks. Sometimes the paleomagnetic information is also used to reconstruct the location of a rock at the time of formation, prior to any movement by plate tectonics. In order to obtain useful data, paleomagnetists precisely identify the orientation of rock samples at the time of collection. They then drill a small oriented core on which they later perform a series of measurements. The samples are placed in a magnetometer which tells two critical pieces of information: 1) the magnetic declination, a measurement similar to what a compass needle tells us, and 2) the inclination, whether Normal or Reverse. When the paleomagnetic information from a sample is compared with known records of polar wandering and magnetic reversals, the timing and original location of a rock (i.e. where it formed) can be determined. The paleomagnetic information, in combination with other dating techniques, provides valuable information about the age of the core samples.

When the complete core is laid out, the paleomagnetists select the best sections for collecting paleomagnetism samples.

After carefully orienting and marking the sample, it is brought to a special instrument for drilling paleomag samples.

Drilling the core is done with great care, to keep the sample in its original orientation.

After the sample is removed, it is sent to a laboratory for analysis in a cryogenic magnetometer. This is what the section of core looks like after the sample has been removed.

Here is the ANDRILL Paleomagmetism Group under the leadership of Gary Acton, Chronostratigraphy Team Leader for ANDRILL SMS. Left to right: Luigi Jovane, Eloenara Strada, Gary Acton, and Robin Frisch-Gleason (temporary team member, until I leave for the field!).

Inspiring Young Minds

2007-11-06T22:00:00.000+13:00

Ann Arbor, Michigan is a world away from Antarctica. Yet the students in Ann Arbor Public Schools are very engaged with ANDRILL and are following the progress of of the drilling. They are asking excellent questions, and illustrating postcards with their visions of Antarctic life and science. It is a thrill to see their inquisitive minds and work. I see the "seeds" getting planted for a new generation of ANDRILL Scientists!

Here are some postcards and questions from the students at Bach Elementary School:

Here is a sampling of the excellent questions the Bach School students sent to the ANDRILL Team. I have distributed these postcards to people across the ice - and they are helping to write a personalized response to every postcard. When they are all answered, I will send them back to the students.

See what kind of answers you come up with. I will post the answers on a future blog!

QUESTIONS:

Why is the ice so blue?

Is the Ice Sheet ever going to melt?

What kinds of tools do you use to study the rocks?

Do people on the ANDRILL team get pneumonia a lot?

How do you cook and keep the food warm out in the field?

Does metal rust in Antarctica?

Where do you get the food for Antarctica, and how does it get out to you in the field?

Do you play any sports in Antarctica?

What kinds of penguins are you seeing?

What information are you getting from the rocks?

What is the best thing about Antarctica?

How do the mechanics fix the equipment in such cold weather?

Who (or What) Goes There?

2007-11-06T21:28:00.000+13:00

A couple of evenings ago I went for a walk out to Hut Point with Robin. It has been very windy over the past couple of days, and yesterday it was gusting upwards of 40 knots; it was ‘Condition 1’ at several locations out on the sea ice / ice shelf yesterday - see the McMurdo weather information page below:

If you look at the picture below you will see what we saw in the snow around the Hut.

You can see that the footprints left by previous walkers after the most recent snowfall have been preserved, but you will notice that they are standing up above the surrounding snow. Why is this? Well, when we step on the snow we press down on it, this pressure forces the snow crystals to bond together. When the wind picks up, it will blow away the looser snow that has not been stepped on, but the wind is unable to pick up and move the snow that has been bound together in the area of each footprint. Hence the footprints that were formerly depressions in the snow are now sticking up above the remaining snow. This picture is taken looking approximately to the west – what direction was the wind coming from? Which direction was it blowing towards? So we have clear evidence for people walking around the hut. What else could we do to try and figure out who it was that was walking around the Hut?

The picture above is the view looking towards the north-northwest from the Hut. In the foreground you can see pressure ridges that have built up in the sea ice. On some of the warmer days about a week ago some of the ice melted at the surface, forming melt pools; this water has since refrozen.

Tonight (which is Tuesday) some of us are going over to Scott Base (see picture above, taken a couple of weeks ago) for dinner; they have a superb view of some pressure ridges there [note added later: we just got back from Scott Base; we had a wonderful dinner, with great company - the Kiwis had been watching the Melbourne Cup on TV -it is the Australian equivalent of the Kentucky Derby. However, we could not see much outside because the weather had deteriorated to a Condition 2].

The footprints we saw near the hut have a subtle link to some of the features we are seeing in the core. There are places where the sediment we see in the core is disrupted in a way that indicates some kind of bottom-dwelling organism was foraging for nutrients. When these critters leave distinct patterns behind in the sediments, the patterns are called trace fossils. You are probably familiar with the use of the term fossil for remains of harder parts of plants or animals (e.g. shells and bones), which are called ‘body fossils.’ The term Trace Fossil refers to marks or tracks in sediment that result from some behavior by an animal that provides some evidence for the shape and characteristics of the animal. There is, in fact a whole branch of Paleontology (the study of fossils) devoted to the study of trace fossils; it is called Ichnology. The word Ichnology comes from a greek word ‘ikhnos’, which means ‘trace’ or ‘track’. The traces left by various critters are divided into groups that indicate what the critters were doing, i.e. burrowing, boring, footprints, track marks, feeding marks, trails. Trace fossils are tricky to identify in the core, but some of the fossil material we are seeing in the core includes material that looks like this (the creamy white tubes - the picture is about 4 cm wide):

The little white tubes are actually the ‘burrows’ made by serpulid worms; the insides of the burrows were coated with the white material, which is actually a kind of outer shell made by the worm. These worms are quite unusual.

Lets look at some fossils from elsewhere (i.e. NOT in the core, or in Antarctica); the picture here is of some dinosaur footprints; these trace fossils make up a trackway.
The picture below is of human footprints from Laetoli in Tanzania – they are footprints of early hominids. They have been interpreted to record the hominids fleeing from a volcanic eruption. These are Trace Fossils – they are a type of trackway.

Links and Teacher Resources on Trace Fossils
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/nature/tracefossils/english/index.html
Site has nice simple definitions and some K-12 teaching ideas and activities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_fossil
General Information and links on Trace Fossils

http://education.usgs.gov/schoolyard/fossils.html
Information and Classroom Activities involving Fossils

http://geology.er.usgs.gov/paleo/
USGS Website with Fossil Information

http://www.palaeos.com/Palaeo/TraceFossils.htm
General Information on Ichnology

http://www.envs.emory.edu/faculty/MARTIN/ichnology/
A Guide to Ichnology from a Specialist

http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/10.html
Guide to Trace fossils from the Hooper Virtual Natural History Museum (Carleton University, Canada)

http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/2001_tracefossils_dr/webpages/coprolites.htm
Information on Coprolites on Hooper Virtual Museum Page

http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/t_origins/carbbones/burrow.html
University of Calgary – Information on Trace Fossils

http://www.trilobites.info/trace.htm
Information on Trilobite Trace Fossils

Field trip to the Mackay Glacier

2007-11-05T16:48:00.000+13:00

A couple of days ago we completed our tasks for the day a little early so our chief scientist, Dr. Ross Powell, took us on a field trip out to see the Mackay Glacier up close. Our seismic survey is mapping sediment deposited by the Mackay and this was a great opportunity to understand the depositional process better. To get there from our camp we had to take a very bumpy, 45 min. Pisten Bully ride over multi-year ice. Our camp and survey line are located on single season ice, which means the ice breaks up and flows out to sea every season. That can be a little dangerous as the season goes on, but the ice is fairly smooth and easy to travel over. The multi-season ice is not smooth, at all!!!!

[Note that there was a movie that should be inserted here, but it is too large to insert - Ed.)

Once we had our brains unrattled (which isn’t really a word, but I’m exercising artistic license) we were amazed to find ourselves dwarfed by ice.The Mackay is an outlet glacier from the east Antarctic ice sheet flowing from a high mountain plateau. It ends as a tongue that sticks out onto the sea ice. The forward edge of the tongue shoves the sea ice ahead of it, creating sea ice chunks that often stand vertically reminding me of sculptural works.
In those areas melt pools form this time of year and are great places to find seals. Around the edges of the melt pools delicate ice crystals form. You do have to watch where you step in these areas to make sure you don’t fall into a crack. Some can be fairly deep,but Galen the mountaineer/field safety specialist makes sure we don’t get into trouble.

As the glacier makes its way to the sea, it flows over and through granite and dolerite formations. The sea ice gets shoved up against the cliff sides causing great undulations.
The younger, darker dolerite sits on top of the older, lighter color granite.
Jacob, a student from University of Nebraska, was very excited to examine the crystalline structure of this boulder up close.
As we walked through one of the glaciers canyons, we spotted pockets of clear ice that form when melt water within the glacier refreezes.
If you look closely you can see some sediment trapped in the clear ice. These sediments are carried out to sea and as the glacier melts, drop to the sea floor creating sediment layers that show up in the seismic survey data.
Some members of our party in the distance behind me were trying to find clear ice without sediment to bring back to camp to cool their beverages. I’m not sure why they need ice when you can just stick drinks outside for a couple of minutes! But then, how many times in your life can you say you’ve eaten ice that’s thousands of years old.

Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Hut

2007-11-05T10:21:00.000+13:00

Out at the end of the Hut Peninsula, on an arm extending out from the center of McMurdo Station out into the frozen Ross Sea, sits Discovery Hut. Discovery Hut was built by the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904. On that expedition, he ship became locked in the closing sea ice in February of 1902, and he and his men built this hut to endure the long Antarctic winter.

The hut has been restored, and it is quite a remarkable place to visit. It is like stepping back into time 100 years, and seeing the food, cooking utensils, beds, and other gear laid out just as they were so long ago. Wandering through the hut, one feels a profound connection to Antarctic exploration history, and a sad reminder of the hardships that befell so many explorers. From the hut, one can gaze in one direction up Observation Hill and see the memorial cross for Scott, who died on the return from the south pole in the Terra Nova expedition of 1910 - 1913. Just beyond the Discovery Hut is a cross commemorating George T. Vince, a member of the Discovery Expedition, who fell to his death off the cliff face near the hut.

One is reminded frequently of the dangers of the Antarctic. Yet somehow, these dangers compel me all the more to follow in the footsteps of these explorers and bring their thrill of discovery back to life.

I got mail!

2007-11-05T09:05:00.000+13:00

On Saturday, I got an email telling me that I had mail to pick up! Very exciting since our package mail is held up in New Zealand and boxes sent from the states in August and September still haven't arrived. Only a bit of flat mail is coming through at this point. I just heard that there is 17,000 lbs of package mail cargo in Christchurch on many pallets waiting to come to McMurdo. I hope the packages come before I leave or I'll just be filling out a change of address form to return them all to Anchorage!

It turned out to be two envelopes, one from Mears Middle School with question postcards embellished with fabulous Antarctic technical drawings, and one from the science department with a great reference book on geology for me! Mrs. Gates from Mears also sent some recent Alaskan newspapers with stories about muskox and mushers to keep me connected with Alaska while I'm so far away. Everyone here is loving the drawings and is very impressed. Here is a sample of the work on the 120 postcards. Oops, I let my bird bias run away with me. There were technical drawing of other things, too. Let me try again! :)

One envelope was sent on the 17th of Oct and the other on the 24th, I got them on the 2nd of November (Alaska date - 1st of November) so it is taking around two to three weeks for flat mail to get here.

What is the best thing you ever received in the mail?

Fracture Factory

2007-11-04T08:59:00.000+13:00

With the pressures exerted on the core sediments during drilling, transport and splitting, it is not surprising that there are many cracks and breaks in it. Fractures caused by these processess are classified as drilling induced. There is a team of scientists at the drill site logging (recording) all the fractures in the core, but they are primarily interested in natural fractures. Natural fractures are those created by tectonic movement within the earth's crust or stress on the rocks caused by changes in loading (something heavy above the rock pressing it down - in this area it is usually a volcanic or glacial "something").

Cristina Millan helped me understand some of the different kinds of fractures I have been seeing in the core. She is one of the scientists logging fractures in order to understand the pressures acting on the crust in this area over time.

All of the open fractures are recent in origin - induced fractures. One common type is a tensile fracture, where the pressure experienced by the rock causes two parts to separate. This usually causes a crack straight across the core. We see LOTS of this type of fracture. A second type of induced fracture is a petal centerline fracture. It is caused by the drilling process. This type of fracture has a curved shape coming in from the edge of the core and then makes a straight line down the core. Another common fracture we see happens when rock that is not strong is split in half, creating breaks along weak points and a puzzle or mosaic appearance.

Natural fractures are generally not open or fresh, they are often filled in or mineralized. The most typical natural fractures are veins and faults. Although veins can be broad, in the sediments we are seeing in this core, veins are quite small. The material that fills the fracture to create the vein is usually a different color than the surrounding sediments, making its angled line travelling through the core more visible. A vein usually has a very characteristic angle (or dip) in which they incline through the sediment. Tensile fractures may sometimes occur on vein fractures as the mineralized vein is a weaker point in the core.

Faults are also natural fractures. They are identifiable because some sections of layered sediment will have been shifted up or down or around and appear out of place with the surrounding pattern of layering. The process of fracturing within the rock doesn't remove sediment, it just moves it around or creates spaces for mineralization.

Look at the pictures on this section and see how many of the different types of fractures you can identify.

Sharing ANDRILL Findings From "The Ice"

2007-11-03T14:30:00.000+13:00

Many efforts are in place to share the ANDRILL findings and news while we are on the ice. The main site for ANDRILL related news and information is the ANDRILL website: www.andrill.org. Here are just a few outlets for learning more about ANDRILL.

The Today Show
ANDRILL was visited today by the crew from the Today Show. Two ANDRILL Scientists, David Harwood and Richard Levy, took Ann Curry, anchorwoman, and her crew of 3 on a tour through the core and the laboratory and explained the geological and paleoenvironmental significance of the ANDRILL findings. Harwood and Levy also explained the context for ANDRILL and how we can use information from the ancient rock record to help us understand the present and speculate about future changes global climate systems.

Harwood and Levy also spoke passionately about the importance of training our current students, the next generation of scientists, to understand global change, and the consequences of human actions (and inactions). They also asserted that a big part of the ANDRILL commitment is to educate policy makers about the scientific findings which reveal information to us
about ice sheet responses (past, present and future) to global warming.

The Today Show will be reporting from Antarctica about ANDRILL and many other aspects of Antarctic Science on November 5 and 6 (in the U.S.)

Project Iceberg Videos
One of the ANDRILL team members, Megan Berg, has just made a wonderful video on "Antarctica Today" that
she has just posted to the ANDRILL website. You can view it at: http://www.andrill.org/iceberg/videos/index.html. This is the first of this year's videos, which follow a great series that she produced last year, found on the same link.

Postcards from the Field
In addition to these blogs, the ARISE team is writing "Postcards from the Field" and posting them to the following site: http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/people/postcards/andrill/andrill_post.html. This is a great place to see photographs and read short descriptions about our life and work in Antarctica. There are many interesting links on the postcards that will take you to related "postcards."

Phone and Video Tele-Conferences
Students all over the world are having opportunites to communicate with on-ice ANDRILL scientists and educators. Numerous conferences have been conducted, either with video technology at both ends so that students and ANDRILL team can see and talk to one another in real time, or via phone with Powerpoint Slideshows sent beforehand so that everyone can be looking at the same images while connected via phone lines. Thousands of students have had this special opportunity to talk to scientists on the ice and to ask questions. It's been fantastic at both ends!

No "Herbies" for Happy Campers

2007-11-02T21:01:00.000+13:00

Winds that build into storms and flow toward McMurdo out of the South are called "Herbies." My last experience with Survival School, involved a Herbie and a Condition 1, (**see last paragraph for a definition) both of which I never want to have to deal with again, so I had been dreading going back to “Happy Camper School” this year!

But…this year’s survival training took place in beautiful weather. Not a single Herbie in sight! The temperature ranged between zero and twenty below most of the time, but it wasn’t windy and the sun was shining brightly. Our Big Reds are incredibly warm and with layers of long underwear and fleece shirts and pants, we were toasty as long as we kept moving! It was so bright that goggles were a must to avoid snow blindness.

We were driven out onto the ice shelf, part of Antarctica’s huge ice sheet that has pushed out over the ocean. The ice is an incredible 35-40 meters deep. Our FSTP (pronounced F-stop, meaning Field Safety Training Program) leaders taught us skills we would need if we found ourselves in an emergency situation in Antarctica. Even though I have had this training before, I learned new things and reinforced former skills. The main skill that was stressed was prevention, but if we should find ourselves in a bad situation…stop and think. Good advice for everyone, I think.

One form of prevention was that even though the weather looked beautiful, it was necessary to drill holes in the sea ice to flag a line to the latrine just in case... the weather can change suddenly and viciously in Antarctica, and getting lost in a whiteout can be disastrous. Whiteouts reduce visibility to zero, and without a horizon or landmarks people easily become disoriented. Raging winds make it impossible to hear. Our survival trainers created a whiteout simulation was for our team by placing buckets on our heads. We had to try to find a lost member without sight or hearing and our only tool was a rope. It is a very difficult rescue! The best way to avoid that scenario is to stay inside in a whiteout or condition 1!

For all of my northern friends, try these ideas for staying warm in the cold chill of winter: stay hydrated; eat chocolate or candy for an immediate calorie boost, but then add grease to rev your metabolism, (this is for prolonged exposure, not just walking to the mailbox!) wear many layers, but never wear cotton next to your skin (cotton kills!), and move around. As soon as my toes began to get cold, I started walking around, and they soon warmed up. Swinging your arms also helps.

Our greatest problem was trying not to sweat as we were setting up two 100 pound Scott tents, four mountain tents digging a Quinzee, boiling water for dinner, flagging the trail to the latrine, building twenty sleep kits, and building an ice wall to block the wind from the tents. Sweating cools you off, so staying warm, but not sweating required constant attention to your body temperature. There were twenty of us, and we worked well as a team. Survival as your common goal is extremely motivating!

Building a Quinzee hut took the efforts of the entire team. All of our sleep kits (large duffle bags with pads, liners and sleeping bags) were piled on top of each other in a huge bonfire style. Then we shoveled snow on top of them until they were covered by about a foot or more of snow in all directions. We pounded it down tight, and then dug a tunnel through which we could retrieve the bags. The inside of the hut was carved out to make a space for 2-3 people to sleep. Snow is such a good insulator, that most of the people who slept in there claimed they slept warm.

I slept with four people in a Scott tent meant for two to three people. That fourth person made it feel rather claustrophobic, but it also helped generate a lot of heat. We all slept warm…something I did not experience during my first Happy Camper School. As a matter of fact, I was anything but happy that year, so I made a play on that for Halloween.

When we got back to town, it was buzzing with excitement as everyone dressed for the Halloween costume party. I really thought I would have to miss the party because of Happy Camper School, so I did not have a costume plan. Robin, one of the ARISE teachers, gave me a flashing red nose, so I added black gloves and a sign that said: “Unhappy Camper: I wish I’d listened to my FSTP trainer—sunburned nose and frostbitten fingers.” (to see a picture of me visit my friend, Mindy Bell's blog at http://www.polartrec.com/node/1959. She is a Polar Trec teacher in McMurdo with scientist Stacy Kim) It was the best I could do five minutes before the party, but I was considerably underdressed in comparison to the amazing creativity of the McMurdo Community. Check out the pictures of the National Geographic—he was amazing and it was no surprise that he won a prize. Hope your Halloween was filled with treats and no tricks!

**In Antarctica we have three weather conditions that are flashed on TV screens and the intranet constantly. Condition 1 is by far the worst. Visibility is less that 100 feet, or wind speed is greater than 60 mph, or the wind chill is greater than -100 °F. In a Condition 1 you are required to stay where you are. If you are in the galley, you have to stay there. In your dorm or office, the same thing. Field camps have to get in their tents and hunker down as best they can. Last year, a Condition 1 hit a field camp and lifted up a snow machine and tossed it into the air like a toy. Luckily no one was hurt, but it serves as a reminder that Antarctica can have a very nasty temper, and it should never be underestimated or forgotten. Condition 2 is visibility of less the ¼ mile, or wind speeds between 55-65 mph, or a wind chill factor between -75° and -100°F. Obviously not a day to spend much time outside either! Condition 3 is anything better than a Condition 2 up to a beautiful sunny day.

Icono-Clastic Core

2007-11-02T08:59:00.000+13:00

The various pebbles larger than their surrounding rock (matrix) are all called clasts. Clasts can be quite small or very large - the current clast size record for our SMS drill hole stands at 36.08cm. That clast was so big that it looked like another thick layer of sediment going all the way across the core. We only get a little section of one that large - we don't really know what shape the entire clast might have been, no way to tell if we went through it the long way or only clipped a short side. Officially, any grain larger than 2mm is a clast.

There are clasts that have familiar shapes which the night crew sometimes names - like Groucho Marx's moustache or Sponge-Bob Square Clast. Some are beautiful marbles or granites that would make lovely jewelry. Some clasts are wildly colored - I've seen bright blues, greens, oranges, purples, reds, and yellows.

There may only be a few clasts in a section of core, or there may be so many that the section of core is mostly clast (some of these look like very fancy granite countertop or tile). Every clast in every meter of core is meticulously logged and described. Over 23,000 clasts so far!

Whether a clast is striped, plain, speckled, weathered, full of holes filled in with other minerals, in layers, or solo, it is an important piece of information about the environment at the time it was deposited and possibly earlier. For example, we can get very precise age dates for volcanic clasts as well as a history of volcanic activity in the area.

Clasts usually have travelled some distance before they got included in the rock where we found them. By tracking back to the parent rock layer where the clasts originated, we can learn about how drainage networks in the area worked at the time of deposition. Here in Antarctica, glaciers form the network but in most of the rest of the world, rivers and streams perform that function.

We might also learn about mountain building uplift of earth's crust. When the crust rises over time, mountains are created when some of the material erodes away and leaves only sections of the original rock. Those eroded bits are carried away and many are incorporated in other rock far away from their source. The further towards the top of the mountains a layer is, the more of that type of rock has been eroded and gone somewhere else. Look at the picture of the Trans Antarctic Mountains below and follow the layers across. You should be able to see that the layers towards the top have more material missing than the lower layers.

Find a bare patch of ground outdoors, preferably not in human imported sediments (i.e. a sandbox) and look at all the rocks and pebbles you can find there. Are they similar to one another? Are they similar to other rocks in the area? How many different kinds of rocks can you find? Someday, these pebbles might become clasts in a new layer of rock starting right in front of you!

Bits and Pieces

2007-11-01T17:22:00.000+13:00

When the team of sedimentologists looks at the core, they describe one layer of rock at a time - one episode of deposition. One of the main characteristics that sedimentologists describe in a rock layer is its texture.

Texture in the wider world usually refers to how something feels when you touch it and describing texture uses words like rough, smooth, bumpy, fuzzy, soft, and scratchy. In geological terms, texture refers to the sizes and roundness of the particles or grains that make up rock. It does often translate into differences you can feel when you touch the rock, but the terms used describe the grains.

Some common terms used to describe rock texture are:
sand (smallest grain size you can still see with your naked eye, feels gritty);
silt (smallest grain size you can see with a magnifying lens, still feels gritty);
clay (no grains visible without the use of a microscope, it feels smooth);
angular (sharp edges to grains);
rounded (curved edges to grains); and
spherical (how closely the 3D grain shape conforms to a globe shape).

While rock texture is purely descriptive observation of the rock and includes no interpretation of the processes that created the rock, the texture is a strong indicator of the environment at the time of deposition and what happened to the rock particles before deposition.

Look at the rock in the two pictures. How are their grain size and shape similar? How are they different? What other comparisons can you make?

How are the grains arranged or sorted?

The Seismic Survey

2007-11-01T16:22:00.000+13:00

Hope everyone had a good Halloween and enjoyed a chocolate bar for me. I wanted to show you what “Little Andrill” has been up to lately and give you a math problem to solve. In my blog while waiting for the weather to clear, Marv described the seismic survey process. I have some photos to share with you now that we’ve started the survey.
The first step is to get a good hole to drop the air cannon into so that it is under the surface of the ocean under the sea ice under us. Kyle Webster is our driller. He likes to call himself the “Drilling Superintendent”. He makes great holes for us.

And sometimes enjoys his free time. Note: this photo was taken while we were all having a lunch break.

After we have a good hole to work with, the air cannon is lowered to eight meters below the surface and fired four times with 2,000 psi (pounds per square inch) of pressure.

The geophones that trail behind the airgun trailer (known as the Thunder Sled) for one mile record the vibrations from the strata under the sea floor and are recorded by computer equipment.
Marv and Ross will look at the data for quite some time after we complete the survey to determine the best location for a future core drilling project. Ross is hoping to get an area of large depositional Holocene records that will tell us more about the history of the Mackay Glacier.
Here’s the math question part: while we were completing our work yesterday, some of us were wondering just how much ice was coming out of the holes being drilled. Bob, my fellow ARISE Educator tried to figure out the answer using snow and finger rather than pencil and paper.

Feel free to use a calculator if you need to. What is the volume of the hole that measures 13 inches in diameter and is averaging 2.2 meters deep? (Sorry, yes you will have to do a metric conversion, but I’m sure you can look it up on Wikipedia or somewhere else) By the way, don’t use the numbers that Bob is using. He mixed up the units and didn’t get the right answer the first time. And here’s a photo of me in front of our kitchen tent just so my family doesn’t forget what I look like.

[Note: Julia is currently on the Seismic Survey. Are you wondering how she is able to blog without internet access? CDs with her blog text and pictures mysteriously arrive at Crary Lab every now and then. What is happening is that helicopter pilots that are passing by the survey camp or are ferrying some equipment out there stop at the camp, and Julia hands them a CD that they later drop off here at Crary Lab. We then post her blog for her]

The Today Show in McMurdo!

2007-10-30T17:40:00.000+13:00

There is great excitement around here, as the crew of the Today Show are arriving in McMurdo for a week long stay. They are here to report on many different aspects of Antarctica, including the science research. I understand that Ann Curry is coming here (and I just saw the C-17 aircraft arrive - as I have a view of the ice runway from my office window), Matt Lauer is going to the Arctic, and Al Roker, the weather man is going to the Equator in Equador, all for simlutaneous reporting. I also heard that the primary focus of this series is global climate change, of which ANDRILL is a key player. I find it very exciting that awareness about climate change has now reached a critical enough level that mainstream media are flying to the ends of the earth for a week to cover it and popularize the scientific research. I applaud them for their efforts to bring the science and global systems awareness alive to viewers and to make it relavent to their lives.

The Today Show team will be spending time with and interviewing members of the ANDRILL Team, as well as other science teams here on ice. I understand that they will have several taped segments, and two live, simultaneous broadcasts from around the world, scheduled for the mornings of November 5 and 6 (in the U.S., which would be the wee hours of the mornings here on November 6 and 7.) I will look forward to hearing your responses to what you see in their broadcasts!

Feeling Safe

2007-10-30T17:35:00.000+13:00

Tim Cully is a part time Mountaineer in Antarctica. In his off-ice life he is an Emergency Room nurse in Wyoming. On very short notice, in late September, Tim, a seasoned Antarctic mountaineer and veteran to McMurdo in a wide range of roles, was asked to come lead our Mackay Sea Valley field team, since the original mountaineer was no longer able to go. Tim was only able to take a few weeks off of work, but his expertise was needed to get the team safely out to the field area over sea ice, and to set up camp on the sea ice near Granite Harbor, around 100 miles from McMurdo Station.

The chief scientist eagerly accepted his limited availability, and said he would patch coverage for the field team with different mountaineers after Tim left.

I was puzzled why they would go to the expense of flying someone out for such a short time, when they would still have to involve other mountaineers soon after the project started.

Then I met Tim.

From the very first meeting, Tim took leadership. He introduced himself to the team in a manner which seemed to say, "We are a team here and I value your ideas as well as your safety." It was the first time I had confronted my fears about traveling over sea ice, which has many potential dangers. Cracks. Thinning ice. Heavy vehicles passing over potentially invisible cracks.

Immediately our first meeting focused on the task ahead: to plan our 24 hour traverse, without stopping for the night, since it would be a huge task to set up camp in the middle of the ice, rather than to press on and set up a permanent camp. Was I scared? Heck yes! But somehow Tim laid it out and dealt with the dangers in a very calculated way, and presented to the team what his plans were to minimize the dangers and keep the journey safe. After giving us the facts and sharing his thoughts, TIm said something I never thought I would hear. He said, "Is everyone comfortable with this plan? We won't move ahead unless everybody feels okay with it."

Wow. So the 47 year old teacher from Michigan, who wasn't feeling as young as she once was, could still say, "Hang on, guys. I'm scared!"

Well, I didn't say it out loud. But I was relieved to have a team leader who was sensitive to the fact that I had two children at home to whom I wanted to return safely. It was clear that Tim wasn't the type to gamble with our safety. He also left nothing to chance. From double checking every tent, to triple checking fuel supplies, to securing three different radio types to take to the field, Tim took no shortcuts at ensuring our safe field season. He maintains the priority of getting the scientists out into the field, collecting data, but he does so in a way that does not jeopardize safety or challenge common sense.

In the end, the traverse ended up involving only half the group, and the rest of the team flew (minus me, who will fly out in a week or so) by helicopter. The traverse ended up stranded for 2 days due to equipment difficulties and poor weather which prohibited mechanics from flying out. But I know that the traverse party was warm, comfortable, and safe, even in their "stranded" state.

I saw Tim today when he helicoptered out of the field to prepare for his re-deployment to Christchurch tomorrow. He assured me that all was well with the team, that camp was established, and that they were well engaged with the seismic survey. I can only hope the other mountaineers inspire as much trust as Tim, since we will have a month in the field, followed by the long journey home to McMurdo.

Thanks, Tim, for making me feel safe!

Arrival at Mackay Sea Valley

2007-10-30T17:18:00.000+13:00

NOTE: Julia is in a remote field camp, and she will have limited access to technology. Her journals will be posted when they are available. In most cases, pictures will be posted when she returns. We were lucky with this post, because a helicopter brought her CD back to town with these pictures and a handwritten journal. Enjoy!

Journal from October 24, 2007:
Mackay Sea Valley Camp on the sea ice.

We finally made it out to our camp on Wednesday, October 24, 2007. The helicopter ride was amazing. Guys from the carpenter shop came out to our site ahead of us and set up one tent for a kitchen and one for a science tent--both with heat! We set up pyramid-shaped Scott tents for sleeping. My job was to organize the science tent and arrange work areas for computer work, storage and a clothes dryer section.

We finally started the seismic survey yesterday and completed twenty-five holes--only 375 to go! Weather has been beautiful and we've had a couple of excursions to see the seals--even some seal pups! See the cute baby in the picture below.But life can be harsh in Antarctica. One sorrowful mother seal was mourning her dead pup--so sad to see that.

Have to run--off for another day in the field.
Julia's bunny boots on sea ice.

Reminders

2007-10-30T09:16:00.000+13:00

The other night I hiked out to Hut Point (where one of Scott's huts is preserved as a historical site) on the ridge trail. There are beautiful views to the north and along the edges of Ross Island but the main thing that struck me was that at the top of every hill crest was another memorial to someone who had died here. There are a lot of crossess and memorials in the McMurdo area.

It is a sobering reminder that we are existing here on the very edge of possibility - this is not a place kind to unprotected humans. I'm also reminded of this truth when I leave my glove off for a few moments to take a picture and the wind hits it full on, making my skin prickle painfully. Only with the extensive planning and support of thousands of people, buildings, power plants, vehicles of all sorts, giant amounts of fuel and cargo, and a great focus on making conservative safety decisions every hour of every day, can we exist here at all. Sitting in my heated office, tapping away on my computer keys, it is very easy to forget what an accomplishment it is for people to be investigating our questions here in Antarctica.

An historic quote shared by the meteorologists the other night suddenly seems very appropriate: Below the 40th ltitude south, there is no law. Below the 50th, no God. And below the 60th, no common sense. And below the 70th, no intelligence whatsoever. - Kim Stanley Robinson

Hangin' Around McMurdo...

2007-10-29T17:25:00.000+13:00

McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Cold. Remote. One expects that only the toughest come here - and they spend their time doing field work for long hours, and coming "home" to a high-calorie dinner, and bed. Right?

The long hours of fieldwork are certainly the foundation of the United States Antarctic Program! Scientists work day and night to make the most of the short Antarctic season.

Well, there's a bit more to McMurdo. That is the part I would like to share with you. For every one scientist in McMurdo, there are 8 Support Staff. These include electricians, cooks, dish washers, recreation directors, store managers, mountaineers, carpenters, equipment operators, solid waste engineers, and so forth. These people need a liveable place to spend 5 months (since most of them make a commitment to spend that long, arriving in early October and leaving in early March.) So - here is what the non-science life in McMurdo looks like.

When people are walking down the road, everyone looks alike! And when people go to meals to a group gathering, there is a mass of red parkas! Our parkas (known as "Big Reds") are so bulky, that we always hang them outside the dining room or offices. Imagine trying to find your own parka!! Thankfully, we all have our names written prominently on the fronts.This photos shows one of the four Big Red bays outside the dining hall.

In McMurdo, we stay in dormitories. Most of them are 2 or 3 floors tall, two per room, coed dorms, and each dorm has a lounge and a laundry room. This is what some of the dorms look like. They are quite comfortable, and well heated.

Besides dormitories, there are many different kinds of buildings. There is one main science laboratory, called the Crary Lab, built on a hillside in three levels. ANDRILL is one of 12 science projects currently on ice, and all of them have offices in the Crary Lab. Everywhere you go, people are busy planning for the field, or processing samples or data collected in the field. It is a very exciting place, filled with scientists from all around the world!

Besides the dormitories and the science lab, there are many other buildings around. Many departments in McMurdo are there to support the science efforts. Berg Field Center is where all of the field gear is kept and repaired. It's amazing to walk through and see their stash of tents and sleepingbags and ice axes and all of the other stuff you need for doing fieldwork!

The Science Support Center also supports the science efforts by holding mandatory classes to train scientists in a number of areas. My first week here, I went to "school" a lot! I went to: Sea Ice School, Survival School, and Snowmobile School - each lasting 1 - 2 days. People at the SSC are specially trained to teach the scientific teams, and the teachers who accompany them, these important skills.

This is the coffee house, which is a big gathering spot in the evenings. I love to come here with my friends at night! The coffee house is the venue for movies on Sundays and Tuesday evenings, though I have yet to find time to take in a movie!

The chapel is beautifully situated on a hillside overlooking the sea ice and the ice runway. It is a non-denominational chapel, with many different types of services occurring throughout the week. As with every other space in McMurdo, the building has a multitude of other uses including yoga classes and self-help groups.

Believe it or not, there is a greenhouse in McMurdo! It is a wonderful place to go for a dose of greenery and humidity. Lettuce, cucumbers, flowers and herbs are grown in the 700 sq. ft. greenhouse. There are even two small hammocks to recline in to promote peaceful relaxation.

Finally, you cannot miss the Chalet, which houses the National Science Foundation Headquarters for the U.S. Antarctic Program and the Admiral Byrd Memorial. Out front of the chalet are all the flags of the 12 Original Signatory Nations of the Antarctic Treaty - quite an impressive sign of international cooperation!

The Gap

2007-10-29T16:09:00.000+13:00

When there is a gap in the rock record (that nice series of layers deposited over time) there isn't an actual empty hole. We have to use clues in the rock to figure out that there is something missing. That gap is called an unconformity or disconformity.

Look in the picture to the right for the edge where a series of fine lines is cut off at an angle by a lighter layer of rock. The change of angle of the rock with one set of layers ending abruptly in a different type of rock is a big signal that something is missing between those two pieces of rock. Where the two types of rock meet is called a contact. There are several unconformities in this record, the others are harder to see - they are much more subtle!

The gap may represent a single event or a series of events. It might represent a loss of 100 years of information or it might represent a loss of millions of years of recorded time in that location. There is no way to tell what happened in the rock that is no longer present. This is one reason that ANDRILL and other drilling programs drill multiple cores, a section that might be missing in one core may not be missing in another core. If layers that are the same in both can be identified and matched up, then the missing pieces of time may be filled in between the two (or more) cores. See the diagram on the left for a simple illustration of this concept.

What might cause unconformities? Think about the types of things that might break down, move, or destroy rock.

Very Happy Campers

2007-10-28T20:12:00.001+13:00

We could not have had better weather for Happy Camper School!

It was a balmy +9 Fahrenheit . Our group included people from the Firehouse, the Hospital, the Heavy Machine shop. the Electricians shop, and other science groups, so we got to meet people outside the Andrill group which was good. After a brief intro to the dangers associated with being outdoors in Antarctica we rode out to the 'Happy Camper' Base on the McMurdo Ice Shelf in a 'Delta' - it was initially designed for transporting people across the Canadian tundra we were told. We learned about stoves and the camping equipment, then we collected our equipment, and went out to set up camp.

We pitched two Scott tents, 4 mountain tents, and built a Quinzee. Some people (including Rainier, from the Andrill ARISE group) built trenches. We also flagged the route to the outhouse, built a protective wall, and set up the camp kitchen. Check out the other ARISE blogs to hear more about Happy Camper School.

Some people went cross-country skiing. I took pictures of the banners that I have from Talahi Community School in St. Cloud Minnesota, Friends School of Minnesota in St. Paul, and my Department (Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, Minnesota), with Mt. Erebus in the background.

We got buzzed by the helicopters that were flying past several times - that added some excitement. Then along with other 'campers' I carved the letters 'Andrill' from the quarry used for making the blocks for the snow wall. The 'R' took several attempts.

It was some time after 11pm when I finally turned in for the night after a cup of cocoa. After a warm night (there were four of us in a Scott Tent), it was still relatively warm in the morning, with a slight breeze.

There was low cloud, and it was quite dramatic-looking with the snow and ice on Hut Point Peninsula behind us.

We spent Saturday morning learning how to use the radios - our group radioed South Pole station to get the weather there! In the afternoon we went through a couple of scenarios. The first was searching for a lost person in a 'Condition 1' (i.e. a serious blizzard); our group of 10 spent a long time making our search plan, and we ran out of time, so we failed to find our lost person. We just had a rope, and we simulated blizzard conditions by putting buckets on our heads.

The second scenario was that we were in a vehicle that had burned, and we had managed to all escape with one survival bag, and there was 'Condition 1' weather approaching: we had to pictch a tent, build a snow wall, radio McMurdo, and boil a quart of water in 10 minutes. We radioed McMurdo, and boiled the water, and we almost got the tent pitched - we did not build the snoww wall - the snow was really difficult to quarry out, and the tools not nearly as nice to work with as the ones we had used the day before. I certainly feel much better prepared in case I should face a survival situation here - or anywhere.

ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY-ASKED QUESTIONS:
Did you get cold when you slept?

No. This was for several reasons. Firstly, I changed into dry socks and long johns when I got in to the tent. They were damp from all the exercise I had gotten, and if I had stayed in them, I would have gotten cold. Also, there were four of us scrunched in a Scott tent, and that made it really toasty. If anything I was overheated - almost sweating, which was a bad thing, because sweating is bad because it produces moisture, which can freeze and cool one down too much. Being cold (especially my toes because I had had a previous frostbite injury on them) was what I had worried most about before Happy Camper, but this proved to be least problematic - helped in part by our beautiful 'balmy' weather, and the precautions I took to make sure I was appropriately warm.

Did I sleep?
Not much. It was horribly claustrophic in the sleeping bag, and very hard to move around. I must have dozed off at some point, because when I woke up I was horribly panicked about being 'locked' in my sleeping bag - I managed to undo the zip and all the drawstrings and calm myself down, and organize things so I could stay warm around my face and upper body without pulling all the drawstrings tight, after that I felt much better

Did I have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?

No. but I could hear people who did - the snow squeaks as one walks, so I could hear people walking to the outhouse, and I could also hear people walking around because they were cold, and I could hear all the snorers, as well as people getting in and out of tents to go to the the outhouse. Some people used pee bottles in the middle of the night, so they didn't have to go out.

Were my boots frozen in the morning?

They were very cold. I put handwarmers in to them and by the time I had sorted out my clothing in the morning, they were okay for wearing.

Rock bottom basics

2007-10-28T13:24:00.000+13:00

Coming into this geology group as a biologist, I've been learning lots of new things! Many of the things that scientists of various disciplines learn from rocks are based on one concept, the law of superposition - this means that the oldest sediments are deposited first (at the lowest level), then newer ones deposited on top of them, then even younger ones, etc. When we look at horizontal layers of rock, the ones toward the bottom are older than ones towards the top. In order to "read" the rock story in the correct time order we read from the bottom up. This basic principal is the starting point for determining the relative age of rock layers.

Look closely at the rock section on the left and see how many layers you can identify. What characteristics of the rock change between the different layers? Which characteristics or features remain the same?

Of course, it isn't always this simple. Look closely at the rock section on the right and see how many layers you can locate. Many things may happen to the rock during or after deposition that may change the appearance and orientation of those original layers. Environmental conditions or physical events in earth's crust over time may even destroy some of the layers in some areas. The job of the sedimentologist is to interpret the tiny clues left behind in rock to understand both the environment in which the rock was formed as well as what has happened to the rock since. Learning to "see" what has happened to the sequence of rocks over time takes up a large portion of any geologist's training.

What can you think of that would make a good model for layers of rock deposited in a time sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top?
One example that I thought of is a lasagna with alternating layers of noodles, sauce and cheese.

Toasty Coziness

2007-10-27T18:13:00.000+13:00

2am in a Scott tent: a double gloved hand reaches out of the tiny breathing hole at the top of a mummy bag, feels around, locates a package of oatmeal rasin cookies, pinches the rock-hard frozen cookies, and sucks them into the bag to be warmed to a gnawable texture. Mmmm, midnight snacking in Antarctica!

We all survived Happy Camper school, and more, we had a wonderful time! The shelf ice south of Ross Island can be anything from a breathtaking vista to a subtly beautiful environment depending on the lighting - we were lucky to see both while missing out on wind and low visibility conditions.

Everyone slept fairly warmly, those that had cold patches found ways to get warm and get back to sleep. We had folks in quinzees, Scott tents, mountain tents, and survival trenches. Outdoor temps were around -28C at night and inside various structres warmed to -10C (quinzee), -20C (trench), and -22C (Scott tent). I especially enjoyed the gentle pitter patter of tiny frost crystals formed from our moist breath breaking off the tent walls and falling back down on my face and bag --- over time I suspect it would become irritating.

Our group of 20 campers were a cheerful and able group with quite a bit of outdoor experience and enough good will to fill in the gaps. Definitely the group to be stranded in the "deep field" with! Our communal kitchen area kept 5 water pots boiling and melting most of the evening for insta-foods and filling the all-important hot water bottles to take into your sleeping bag for the night.

How do you keep warm in cold or windy temperatures? What things would you do to be as warm as possible?