Polar Soils Blog

Happy Antarctica Day!

2011-12-02T04:43:00.004+13:00

On this day (December 1) in 1959, the Antarctic Treaty was signed.

The Antarctic Treaty sets aside the continent for scientific research and international scientific cooperation. It also includes agreements that set out the guidelines for the preservation of Antarctica's environment and conservation of Antarctic flora and fauna. Further, Antarctica is preserved by the treaty for only peaceful purposes. All military action is banned, and it was the first anti-nuclear treaty made during the Cold War. Quite an accomplishment! As a result of the treaty, there are no territorial claims over Antarctica. That makes Antarctica the only continent with no nations.

The treaty was originally signed by the 12 nations that were actively working in Antarctica at the time, but since then the number has grown to 48 nations. Together, those nations represent about two thirds of the world's population.

The treaty, still today, is a great example of the benefits of international cooperation! We all share a mutual interest, right, and responsibility regarding Antarctica, in terms of research, preservation, and peacefulness.

Preamble of the Antarctic Treat:

The Governments of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, the French Republic, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Union of South Africa, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America,

Recognizing that it is in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord;

Acknowledging the substantial contributions to scientific knowledge resulting from international cooperation in scientific investigation in Antarctica;

Convinced that the establishment of a firm foundation for the continuation and development of such cooperation on the basis of freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica as applied during the International Geophysical Year accords with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind;

Convinced also that a treaty ensuring the use of Antarctica for peaceful purposes only and the continuance of international harmony in Antarctica will further the purposes and principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations;

Have agreed as follows... (You can read the entire text of the treaty at the NSF website.)

So, to honor this great example of international cooperation and all of the exciting science that has come from such a unique location, I wish you a Happy Antarctica Day!

End of the Fourth Season

2011-01-05T20:12:00.007+13:00

Well, my fourth season on the ice has come to an end. I've left Antarctica and flown back to Christchurch, New Zealand.

It has been a crazy few days! I had scheduled to finish my field work last Friday, leaving myself a few days in "Mactown" (McMurdo Station) before my scheduled flight back to Christchurch today. I needed to prepare samples for shipment, fill out paperwork and reports, and put away equipment and gear. However, because of the bad weather, I didn't finish my field work until yesterday! So, yesterday, I said my goodbye to the dry valleys, and spent the evening busily wrapping up the season.

Here's the last view I had on the ground in the dry valleys. It's taken from the Bonney Riegel just before I boarded the helicopter. The weather was very cloudy and cold, but there was a small patch of blue sky!

In addition, our crew from Colorado State University joined us on the ice yesterday, so there were more people in the lab. (Though, at this point, we were still missing one person from our group, Ross, who had gotten delayed in Boston.)

Because the first part of the season was so unusually warm, there's been a lot more melting of ice than in previous years. The runway that the US Air Force airplanes use is built on the ice. Last week, a plane taking off damaged the runway because it was too soft. So, they've decided to only land C-17's on it at night when temperatures are at their coldest. This means that Ross, the final member of our group, left Christchurch on the plane at 11:00 pm last night. While he was still in the air, at 2:00 AM, I left McMurdo and rode Ivan the Terrabus to Pegasus Airfield. There, we waited for the C-17 to land. (You can see it coming in the distance.)
At 4 AM, the C-17 landed, Ross deboarded and got on Ivan, then I got on the C-17. We traded places! They keep the incoming and outgoing passengers separated, so I didn't get to say "hi" to Ross, but I saw him in the stream of folks loading their gear onto Ivan.

Because there was a lot of work to do, plus new teammates in town to visit with before I left, and I had to report for transport so early in the morning, I didn't go to bed last night. (Luckily I had company, as Jenn and Mike stayed up with me until 2 AM to keep me company. They're great team mates!) So I am very sleepy! But, it's nice to be back in Christchurch where everything is warm and green. Tomorrow morning I catch my flight out of Christchurch to begin the long journey back to Phoenix.

So there you have it: the end of the field season! Of course, I can't sign off without announcing the winner of this year's Best Camp Hair Competition. The winner is...

Mike Poage!

Mike will celebrate by eating a favorite food amongst all the dry valleys inhabitants: a beef stick. But that's not just any beef stick. That's a Beef Stick of Victory.
Congratulations, Mike! Your dream of ruling the camp hair competition has finally come true.

Finally!

2011-01-05T00:01:00.003+13:00

Finally, the weather today was good enough to get to the Bonney Riegel and take the measurements I'd been trying to make since Friday!

I was taking CO2 flux measurements on the plots to which we had added the nutrient treatments last week. The CO2 flux measures how much the organisms are respiring in response to the fertilization. To do this, I use a piece of machinery called a LI-COR CO2 analyzer. Here's a quick clip of me using the machinery on one of the plots:

I place the sample chamber on the PVC ring that marks where I want to measure CO2. I use a Palm Pilot to tell the machine to start the measurement and which sample I'm measuring. I hit "start" and the machine automatically starts taking the measurement! All with the help of my trusty "Green Brain".

And that marks the end of my season! Today was my last trip to the dry valleys. I transport very early tomorrow morning (2:15 AM) to Pegasus Runway to catch my flight back to New Zealand. Goodbye Dry Valleys! Goodbye McMurdo!

Stuck in McMurdo

2011-01-03T18:35:00.002+13:00

Well, the weather hasn't gotten any better! I woke up this morning to find it snowing outside. My trip to Bonney to make my measurements was canceled. I'll be trying again tomorrow. It's my last chance to get in the field, because I'm scheduled to leave Antarctica early Wednesday morning.

In addition to me being stuck here, we have several group members in Christchurch waiting to come down. Ross, the final member of our team, got stuck sleeping on the floor in LAX airport due to his delayed flights. He's reportedly made it to Christchurch, and is now waiting to come down on the C-17. So have several other scientists that we work with from Colorado State University. They are enjoying the warm New Zealand weather and are hoping to fly down to McMurdo tonight. However, the bad weather that kept my helicopter from flying may prevent the C-17 from leaving Christchurch, so they may be stuck there another night. There are also a lot of other people that have been stuck in Christchurch for many nights due to some damage to the runway on the ice shelf caused by the warm weather we had been having.

So, I'm stuck in McMurdo, they're stuck in Christchurch, and we all have things we need to do elsewhere! As the saying goes here, "It's a harsh continent."

Happy 2011!

2011-01-02T12:03:00.006+13:00

Welcome to the first post of 2011! It's been a busy New Year for me here at McMurdo. At the end of last week (and the end of 2010) I was at F6 camp. Bad weather had rolled in which prevented the helicopters from flying into the valley. On Friday the 31st, I had hoped to fly from F6 to Lake Bonney basin for the day, then return to McMurdo Station for the weekend. But, because the helicopters couldn't fly, I didn't make it to Bonney, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make it back to McMurdo! Luckily, at the end of the day, the clouds cleared just enough to let a couple helicopters in and move people out of the valley. So I made it back to McMurdo, but just barely!

Here's a photo as I was flying out of the valley. You can see the narrow line of light on the horizon. That's all the space we had to get out! Above us is a thick, low-flying layer of clouds. That's called having a "low ceiling". The helicopters can only safely fly if the ceiling is above a certain height. Finally, around 4:00 PM, the ceiling lifted enough to let us out!

The reason I wanted to return to McMurdo is because I leave the continent on Wednesday morning, and I have a lot of lab work to get done before I go. For the past two days, I've been busy processing samples and preparing them to ship back to the U.S. for more analyses at home. I also have a lot of paperwork that has to be filled out about our activities in the dry valleys since I've been here. And many other chores!

I did take a couple hours to celebrate the new year. At McMurdo, there is a big festival of sorts for New Year's Eve. There's a live concert called "Icestock", where bands that have formed at McMurdo Station perform. Some people dress up in silly outfits, use noise-makers, and other New Year's Eve traditions. Here are the two friends with whom I rang in the new year. Maya and Heidi are Ph.D. students on another project working out of the Dry Valleys. We were all working in the lab until about 11:00 PM on December 31, but came out (wearing our special hats) to make sure we celebrated the arrival of 2011!

The weather has cleared up a bit, and I'm hoping to make it to Bonney tomorrow to do the work that I had hoped to do on Friday. Fingers crossed!

4th Annual Camp Hair Contest

2010-12-30T20:53:00.007+13:00

Back by popular demand... it's the Fourth Annual Camp Hair Contest!

The water restrictions in the dry valleys means that we are not able to shower or wash our hair while we're out at field camps. That means that people's hair gets very dirty and oily, which of course leads to some very fabulous hair-do's! This is what we call having "camp hair." Having great camp hair is a matter of pride, and the person with the best camp hair is honored throughout McMurdo. So, once again, I'm going to leave it up to everyone reading my blog to decide who has the best camp hair for the 2010-11 field season. Review the photos below of our "camp hair" contestants, and send in your vote! Anyone reading this is welcome to vote, and can do so by sending an email with your choice to me.

Let's meet this year's contestants!

Steven:
University of Colorado student and Stream Team member, Steven has mastered the sight and smell of the unshowered. His gnarly hair is complemented by his Handlebar Fu-Manchops, a look that's only attainable after having been in the field since October.

Chad:Stream Teamer Chad is a more recent arrival to the field, but has lost no time in catching up on the camp hair. Chad's hair specializes in volume, as provided by the Trucker Hat Salon. He gives a thumbs up to stream gauges, flow meters, and campbell data loggers, but a thumbs down to combs and shampoo!

Mike:
Wormherder geologist Mike is back in the running this year. A 12-hour workday of hiking and digging soil pits gives Mike's hair its special flair... and his eyes a crazy look. Carefully balanced by a scraggly beard, his hair needs no additives to defy gravity.

There they are: the 2010-11 season's Best Camp Hair contestants. May the voting begin! The champion Camp Hair will be declared in 5 days.

Fertilizing a Polar Desert

2010-12-29T22:17:00.005+13:00

This week, Mike, Jenn and I have been working on one of the long-term experiments we're running in the dry valleys. This experiment investigates how the soil responds to nutrient fertilization. Like I mentioned yesterday, nutrients are important for organisms to grow and metabolize. Our experiment asks which nutrients are limiting to growth of soil organisms and how giving them extra nutrients influences soil processes (like nutrient cycling). The three of us have added nutrient treatments to our research plots. We added the three major elements that are important to life everywhere on the planet: carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. We do this by adding those nutrients dissolved in water. Every year we add more nutrients and measure the response.

To add the treatments to the plots, we have to bring a LOT of water to the field: 775 pounds of water! We do this at two different places. On Monday we did the plots near F6 where I have been living. Today, we did the plots at the other end of the valley, near Lake Bonney. We carry the solutions to the field in 35 ten-liter carboys, and then transfer 5.6 L at a time to pour jugs with sprinkle caps to be applied to the plots. There's a very specific technique that's important to use. In this video, Jenn and Mike are demonstrating the technique, working at two different parts of the plot at Lake Bonney. Jenn is in the distance sprinkling water over the plot through a plexiglass cone, which helps guide the water to the correct spot like a giant funnel. Mike is closer up preparing to pour by placing his cone in the correct spot.

It's a lot of heavy-lifting of water! And how do we carry all 35 of those carboys? Teamwork.

In the video, you can also see the clouds that were encroaching upon us while we worked. In one direction, skies are blue. In the other, there's nothing but a ceiling of clouds. Right now, I'm back at F6, and those clouds are hovering right over our hut! I hope they pass quickly, because tomorrow I'm scheduled to start the measurements on the plots to see how the organisms are responding. They are much more active when it's sunny and warmer out. Keep your fingers crossed for the return of beautiful weather!

Coastal upwelling

2010-12-28T16:41:00.005+13:00

You wouldn't think that the oceans around Antarctica would have a lot of exciting marine animals. But it does! The shores around Antarctica have quite a variety of marine life, because it is a zone of coastal upwelling.

The water in the ocean doesn't stay in one place. Water moves. You're probably familiar with currents and tides, which are a couple ways that water moves around in the ocean. But water also moves up and down in the ocean, not just around the surface. Here's how.

Water that is on the ocean surface gets pushed around by the wind. When the surface water is pushed away from an area, other water has to move in to replace it. Along the coast of a piece of land, there's no surface water to replace it, so the bottom waters have to rise up to replace that water. Where the bottom waters come up to the surface is called "upwelling".

The surface waters being pushed away will move around the surface and eventually sink to the bottom. It will then eventually upwell to become part of the surface ocean again. It's a big conveyor belt that moves water up and down, in addition to around the surface.

While water is on the bottom of the ocean, it collects a lot of nutrients. The nutrients come from dead things that sink to the bottom and start to decompose. So, at areas where bottom water is rising to the surface, it is bringing along with it a lot of nutrients that had been collecting. Those nutrients are important for living organisms at the surface.

Around the coast of Antarctica, the westerly winds push water away, and it is replaced by the cold, nutrient-rich water below. The high level of nutrients in the upwelled water around McMurdo mean that there is a lot of productivity. There's a lot of phytoplankton in the water that use those nutrients to photosynthesize. Because there's a lot of phytoplankton, there are a lot of animals that eat the phytoplankton, and therefore a lot of animals that eat those animals... a whole food chain! So, there's a lot of animals living off the coast of McMurdo. Some of them are very colorful, just like in the tropics!

The marine biologists here at McMurdo keep a touch tank with some of the animals they catch. Here's what I saw in the touch tank:There's a lot of different types of animals in there, of different shapes and colors. And they all live right here near McMurdo! It's all of this life that lets the oceans support the larger ocean animals that you might be more familiar with:(See the whale and the penguins at the ice edge?)

Even though it's so cold and icy, the oceans are home to several species of whales, penguins, and seals. They can live here because of the upwelling that brings all of those rich nutrients to support the entire food chain in ocean around Antarctica.

[Photo credit: upwelling diagram from sonoma.edu]

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-26T21:02:00.003+13:00

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. For the holiday, I hiked from F6 with the Stream Team to Lake Hoare, where everyone in Taylor Valley gathered for Christmas.

To make the journey, we had to ride the ATV across the ice covering Lake Fryxell to the other side of the lake. Then, we hiked up the hillside, crossed the Canada Glacier and hiked down the other side to the camp at Lake Hoare. It's the Antarctica version of going over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.

Here I am with the crew from F6 as we hiked over Canada Glacier:

At Lake Hoare, there are a lot of great Christmas traditions. One of the most fun is building the gingerbread house and decorating Christmas cookies! Here's this year's creation. We use only edible items to build the house, including the Twizzlers that my sister sent me in a care package. This year's gingerbread house is even energy-efficient, with solar power and a wind generator!
After the decorating, we have a big family-style dinner of ham, asparagus, potatoes, and bread pudding. We follow that up with coffee while playing the gift-swap game. Then, we turn the lights out and have a dance party until we get too tired and crawl into our tents to sleep.

It was great to spend time with my Antarctic family in the dry valleys! It was a fun Christmas as always. Here's the beautiful view we had from the front door of the hut around midnight on Christmas:

Have a happy, safe holiday season!

Patterns in Antarctic Soil

2010-12-23T20:42:00.004+13:00

One of the most noticeable features of the soil in the dry valleys are the strange shapes that cover the ground. These are most noticeable when you're flying over the dry valleys in a helicopter. The irregular shapes are created by cracks that develop in the soil.

These polygons in the soil are very large. They can be many meters across. To give you a sense of scale, here's an aerial shot from a helicopter of F6 camp where I'm staying right now. You can see the polygons in comparison to the hut.

And here's what they look like from the ground. There's still soil the cracks. The cracks are not gaping holes that you can fall into. They are just crevices filled with finer-grained sand than the rest of the soil.
The cracks are created by the freezing and thawing of the ground ice below the soil. Water in the soil expands when it freezes and shrinks when it thaws, which creates the crack, and the finer-grained soil falls into the crack. Because ice and freezing plays a role in the formation of the cracks, they are called "cryogenic cracks".

Our research in the dry valleys has shown that biodiversity is lowest in the cryogenic cracks. So, when we walk across the soil, we specifically walk in the cryogenic cracks so that we are only harming the least diverse part of the community. As you can tell from the first photo, that means we don't walk in many straight lines!

Cryogenic cracks are not unique to the dry valleys of Antarctica. They are commonly found in cold places where permafrost underlies the soil, such as the Arctic tundra. They're even found on Mars, which is one piece of evidence that leads scientists to believe that there may be water on Mars.

New Outhouse

2010-12-22T10:01:00.005+13:00

A helicopter delivered a package to F6 camp. It was our new outhouse!

At the camps in the dry valleys, there is no plumbing. All of our waste material has to be contained in barrels and buckets and shipped off the continent at the end of the season. We can't release it anywhere in the dry valleys, because it is a protected environment. Therefore, we use an outhouse where all of our waste is collected.

At F6, we had an old outhouse that was pretty small and rustic. There was a bucket with a seat that we used for solids. That was covered by an old garbage can lid. For liquids, boys stood outside and used a funnel in a barrel, and girls squatted over a tin can in the outhouse that was then poured into the barrel outside. Here's a shot of the old outhouse:
But the NEW outhouse is much more luxurious! It's bigger. There's two comfortable foam seats with real seat covers: one over the bucket for solids and one where girls can sit over a big funnel that leads to the can. There's a urinal inside for boys, so they don't have to stand outside. But that's not all! There's also hooks to hang up your coat, ventilation panels, and a sunroof! The plexiglass panels let in light, but also heat the outhouse like a greenhouse. Plus it's bigger, so there's more room to store the extra supplies and still be able to move around comfortably. We are very excited to have such a fancy new outhouse!

Here's a video tour of our fancy new outhouse.

Exciting times at F6!

Nunataks

2010-12-20T18:09:00.005+13:00

Today I flew back to the camp at F6 on Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley.

Because there were two stops we needed to make before dropping me at F6, I got to fly over some pretty cool scenery. Instead of coming in the mouth of Taylor Valley from the (frozen-over) sea ice, I flew from over the Asgard Range of mountains that border Taylor Valley on the north side. There are alpine glaciers that cover a lot of the area up there.

This is the view I had coming over the Asgard Range, most of which is covered by the glacier. Just beyond the mountain peaks in the foreground is Taylor Valley. (In the background of the photo are the Kukri Hills, which make up the southern border of Taylor Valley.)

There is a lot of land under the glacier, we just can't see it. However, some of the mountain peaks are tall enough to poke out of the glacier. These are called "nunataks". You can see an example of a nunatak on the right-hand side of the picture above. Nunataks are isolated from the rest of the land by the surrounding ice, which is how they get their name. "Nunatak" is an Inuit word that means "lonely peak". They are not created by the glacier, but were a part of the mountain range before the glacier was there. While organisms living on land below the glacier will probably be killed by the glacier, they may be able to survive for a long time on the nunatak. Scientists find all sorts of organisms living on nunataks in Antarctica, such as bacteria, lichens, and mites. So, even though nunataks are isolated, they are not uninhabited.

Back in Town

2010-12-19T21:12:00.006+13:00

Friday evening I returned to McMurdo Station from Cape Royds. In Antarctic lingo, we call that going back to "Mactown." There, I met up with two more of my group members that have just arrived in Antarctica. Here we are, all three together!We will be a three-member team until early January, when Ross (our fourth member) arrives.

During my two days in town, I've been processing the samples I collected from F6 and Cape Royds. One of the things I have to do is clean the soil off of the moss I've been collecting, so that I can measure the nutrient content of the moss back in the U.S. To do this, I have to place the moss in a dish under the microscope:
I showed you before what patches of moss look like in the field. It looks like a piece of carpet, and it's hard to tell the individual plant stems apart. This is what a piece of that patch looks like through the microscope lens:The green parts you see are just a small part of the moss. Those are the leaves, which grow on a stem. Below all of those green tops are a large mass of brown rhizoids, that work like roots for keeping the moss in place and collecting nutrients. In this picture, the stems are bigger than the rhizoids, but in the moss I work with, there's a lot more rhizoids than stems. There's a lot of soil stuck in that tangle of rhizoids, and I have to wash all of that out. If I don't, when I take my nutrient measurements, I won't be able to tell the difference between what nutrients are in the moss versus the soil. It's very time-consuming, and requires a lot of patience!

Once the moss is clean, I put it in an oven (at a low temperature) to dry it out so that I can safely ship it back to the U.S. for analysis.

This is just one of the chores I've been doing since I've been in Mactown. It's been busy, because tomorrow I head back to F6 on Lake Fryxell for more field work!

[Photo credits: Moss diagram from http://www.botany.hawaii.edu]

The Wonders of Penguin Poo

2010-12-16T20:17:00.008+13:00

Yesterday evening I left Lake Fryxell and flew to Cape Royds, one of the penguin rookeries on Ross Island.

While I am here, I will be measuring respiration from soil covered with penguin poo! When most soil organisms respire, they produce carbon dioxide (abbreviated CO₂). Humans do this when we breath, too. By measuring the amount of CO₂ coming out of the soil, we are measuring how much the soil organisms are respiring. Since penguin poo has a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus, I expect much more CO₂ to be respired from these soils than the dry valleys. (Just think about what you would do... if someone gave you a lot of yummy things to eat, you'd run around and be more active, and therefore respire more. The same thing happens for soil organisms!)

Here's a measurement being taken at the rookery. All the light-colored pink and tan stuff... that's penguin poo! The small machine down by the lake edge is what measures CO₂ coming out of the soil.

The penguins are very funny to be around. Many of them are very curious... just as curious as we are about them! Here's Adrian, who volunteered to help me with my measurements today. Who's studying who?

The great moss hunt

2010-12-14T21:14:00.009+13:00

This is my second day of field work in the dry valleys. Today I was sampling along stream edges for moss. I've been sampling moss for a few years in the dry valleys, and I'm trying to sample from new areas this year that I haven't sampled in the past.

Moss is the only true plant in the dry valleys, though it hardly fits the definition of "plant" that most of us think of. Moss are bryophytes, which are a type of non-vascular plant. In the dry valleys, where temperature, sunlight, and dryness are very harsh to deal with, they grow very slowly. We find them mostly in small patches near sources of water, like streams and snowpatches. Here's a photo of some moss I was sampling at Crescent Stream. Can you see the moss? It's reddish-brown and looks kind of fluffy.During the winter there's no sunlight for photosynthesis, but during the summer the sun can be so intense that it can actually damage plants. (Largely due to the intense UV radiation that I mentioned a couple days ago.) Most of the time you do not find moss that is lush and green, because it's usually too cold, too dry, or there's too much sun damage. The moss I find tends to be brown, because it is "moribund". That means it's not dead, but also not very healthy. The moss is less active in that state, but parts of it can be. I can find green moss in spots where it's protected from the intense sun, though. Here's a little patch of green moss that I uncovered when I moved a rock out of the way at Crescent Stream.

Just like all other plants, moss need water and nutrients to grow. I want to know where the moss is getting its nutrients from. I'm interested in the nutrients in moss because, when mosses die, they decompose in the soil. The carbon and nutrients released from mosses when they decompose are probably a very important part of the soil food web that our group studies. So, when I sample the moss, I also sample the soil, stream water, and ground water, which are the possible sources of nutrients for the moss. You can see some of my tools in the photo above. I scoop the moss into a bag with a spoon, then the soil beneath with a little plastic shovel. I take stream water right out of the stream into a bottle. The trickier part is getting the ground water. To do that, I use a miniature well called a piezometer. Essentially, I insert a tube into the ground until it hits the ground water, then I use a vacuum pump to pull the water up into my flask. Here's a video showing you how it works (as well as some nice scenery along Crescent Stream!).

Since the dry valleys are a desert, moss need to grown near a source of water. The easiest place to find them is right next to a stream. So, to do this sampling, I tagged along with the Stream Team as they went about their daily chores at some of the streams. They have to measure the amount of water flowing in each of the streams and take stream water samples for chemistry. Since I can't travel by myself, I was able to go to the streams they scheduled to visit today to do my moss sampling at the same time. This is what they were doing while I was sampling moss:I was able to sample moss from four streams since I've been here, all along the south side of Lake Fryxell. I hiked from one end of the lake to the other, stopping at each un-sampled stream area that I came across. I'm tired!

Into the Dry Valleys

2010-12-13T21:22:00.009+13:00

Today I left McMurdo Station and headed to the dry valleys to being my field work.

Every time I go between McMurdo and my field sites in the dry valleys, I fly on a helicopter. First, all of my camping equipment, my hiking gear, and the tools I need to do my research had to be loaded onto the helicopter. We leave things like that to the professionals. Here are the heli-techs loading up my gear this morning:

Meanwhile, we stand back and wait for the signal to get on the helicopter. This morning I flew with my new friend Derrick, a scientist who will be using radar to map melting water from snow and glaciers in the dry valleys. This was his first time going to the dry valleys. See how excited he is?

Then, we flew across McMurdo Sound to the dry valleys on the mainland of the continent. Of course, the water is covered in ice, so we're not flying over open water. It takes about 30 minutes to fly across and reach the field camp.

And then, we reached Taylor Valley, where I spend most of my time in the field.

So now I am back at my favorite field camp called "F6". It's on Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley. I have an absolutely beautiful commute to work!

Ozone over Antarctica

2010-12-12T15:53:00.010+13:00

There are a lot of reasons that working in Antarctica can be dangerous. It's cold, windy, and very isolated. One danger that is not as obvious is Ultra-Violet radiation (called "UV" radiation).

UV radiation comes from the sun. The sun naturally puts out a lot of different types of radiation. Some of that radiation we can see as visible light and colors. Some of the radiation we can't see, like UV. Radiation from the sun also carries energy. Some of this energy is very useful. It allows us to see, plants use it to photosynthesize, and much more! But some types of UV radiation are packed with so much energy that it can be dangerous if we are exposed to too much.

Luckily for us on Earth, there is a layer of ozone surrounding us in the atmosphere. Ozone is a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms (written O₃), and it can bounce back harmful UV radiation and prevent most of it from making it to the Earth's surface. That is why the ozone layer is so important. It helps protect the Earth (and everyone on it) from harmful UV radiation. You can see in the diagram that there's a lot of "rays" of radiation coming from the sun, and some of those are stopped at the ozone layer. Only the helpful parts can make it through.

I'm sure you've heard about the hole in the ozone layer. But how did it get there, and what does it mean?

Humans produce some chemicals that can break apart that O₃ molecule. These are chemicals that are made for many useful day-to-day purposes, and we didn't know they broke apart ozone when we started using them. Some of the major chemicals involved are called CFC's (which stands for chlorofluorocarbons... but CFC is a lot easier to say!). CFC's were used in refrigerators and as a propellant in aerosol cans. We liked to use these chemicals because they are not toxic and very stable (meaning they keep their chemical structure for a long time). That made them easy to store for long periods of time and safe for people to use. They are also very light, which means they can float up through the air once they are released from the aerosol can or refrigerator. At first, we didn't know that they were harmful to ozone. But, as more and more people used CFC's, more and more were allowed to float freely around in the atmosphere, eventually rising high up enough to reach the ozone layer.

Here's what happens when a compound like a CFC is in the ozone layer. In the ozone layer, the CFC is exposed to the UV radiation that it had been previously protected from when it was beneath the ozone layer. The UV radiation, because it is packed with so much energy, can break off pieces of the CFC compound. A single chlorine atom breaks off of the CFC in this process. It is actually the chlorine that breaks apart the O₃ ozone molecule. O₃ gets broken apart and is no longer useful for absorbing UV radiation.
If you want to know more about how the reaction occurs in the atmosphere, click this image to make it bigger and read about it:
So why is there one hole in the ozone layer, instead of over the whole planet? Air in our atmosphere moves around. It circulates. (Just think of wind. The same thing happens higher up in the atmosphere.) What ends up happening is that a lot of the CFC's gather together at one spot in the atmosphere that happens to be over Antarctica. The CFC's get trapped down here because of the winds that circle the continent. Because Antarctica is dark for 6 months of the year, the CFC's can build up. As soon as spring arrives and sunlight reappears, the CFC's can be broken, the chlorines released, and the ozone is eaten up!

Here's a map of the bottom half of the globe. The blue/purple areas are where the ozone is almost gone during the summer. The green areas still have an ozone layer. You can see that the ozone hole is very big... bigger than Antarctica!

The ozone hole is not something you can see with our naked eye. The sky doesn't look different. But we see evidence that it is here. During the summer when the hole is present over Antarctica, we receive almost the full blast of UV radiation during the summer when the hole is present. People can easily get sunburn. Also, anything brightly colored fades pretty quickly here. A good example are the orange bags we are issued. In this photo from the airplane runway, you can see quite a variety of shades of orange bags. When they're new, the bags are bright orange and have black straps. Through time, the bags become lighter and lighter, and the straps turn gray. All of the bags in this photo at one point looked like the bright orange one under Liz's head (she's the girl lying down on the left).

Of course, being under the ozone hole is bad for life in Antarctica. As people, we can take extra precautions. We wear a LOT of very strong sunblock. However, wildlife cannot. Scientists working here have noted harmful effects of the increased UV on marine life and other animals.

It's also not just bad for Antarctica. The ozone hole allows more UV radiation to enter over Antarctica, but that energy doesn't just stay around Antarctica. Like I already said, the air in our atmosphere moves around the planet. So extra incoming radiation over Antarctica means more radiation energy for other places on the planet, too. That extra energy can cause all sorts of changes, like increases in temperature, changes in wind patterns, and shifting ocean currents.

So the ozone hole is not just a problem for Antarctica! It is something that we all became concerned about, and we took action. An agreement was signed by many countries requiring them to make laws to reduce the use of ozone-destroying chemicals like CFC's. And it's working! These chemicals are decreasing in the atmosphere and the ozone hole is slowly repairing itself. But, it takes a lot of time to fix a problem that was caused in a very short period of time. Also, there are more than just CFC's that damage ozone. For example, N₂O (nitrous oxide) is released from agricultural fields that are over-fertilized, and when N₂O reaches the ozone, it also breaks apart into compounds that can break apart O₃. So, getting rid of CFC's is a great first step, but we also have to start thinking about ways to reduce some of the other chemicals we release that can harm the ozone.

[Credits: Earth and ozone layer image from http://www.hermes-press.com; CFC and O3 image from http://www.tutornext.com; map of the hole from http://www.coolantarctica.com]

About McMurdo Station

2010-12-10T11:03:00.009+13:00

I've spent the past couple of days at McMurdo Station setting up our lab and prepping for the field. McMurdo is the largest of the three U.S. research stations in Antarctica. (We also have Palmer Station on the peninsula and one at the South Pole. Also, there are two icebreakers that cruise the Southern Ocean for marine research.)In addition to the three U.S. bases, the U.K. bases are also labeled on this map. There are, of course, many bases owned by other countries across the continent that are not labeled on this map.

McMurdo Station sits on Ross Island in the Ross Sea, at the bottom-center of the above map. (The area is named after James Ross, the earliest explorer to reach land in this area of Antarctica in the mid 1800's.) If we zoom in on the McMurdo area, you can see that, while I am here at McMurdo Station (the red dot), I'm not actually on the mainland of the Antarctic continent. We are, however, on the edge of the permanent ice shelf, an area of the Ross Sea that is frozen on top year-round, so it is frequently considered to be part of the continent. That's why it's shaded a different color in the first map. Below Ross Island (to the north), the Ross Sea is also frequently ice-covered, but it melts back, sometimes as far as McMurdo Station, during the summer months. In the map above, you can see how some of that ice is breaking apart around the island. It is called "sea ice", not the "ice shelf", because it is a different piece of ice than the permanent stuff that makes up the ice shelf.

Also on Ross Island is Mount Erebus: the southern-most active volcano in the world. (The volcano is named after James Ross's ship, The Erebus.) In the second map, Erebus is the black-tipped cone on the right side of the island. Mt. Erebus is always looming in the background here at McMurdo. This is what it looks like from the ground while standing on the ice shelf near McMurdo Station:
In this photo, Erebus is pretty quiet. Some days we see it puffing smoke quite a bit.

Here's an aerial view of McMurdo Station:
McMurdo and the other U.S. research stations on Antarctica are funded and managed by the National Science Foundation. Research here has been going steady since 1956. Contractors and the U.S. military provide the support to operate the bases and make the scientific research possible. Some of the research is to understand the Antarctic region and ecosystems, as well as the region's response to changes in climate. This includes studying glaciers, geology, soils, and oceans. People study the chemistry, physics, and biology of all of those components. Also, Antarctica is the home to a lot of atmospheric and space research, because the atmosphere is thinner here than other parts of the planet. That means that there are a lot of scientists at McMurdo studying a wide variety of topics, plus enlisted military and contracted support staff (usually adventure-seekers). During the summer season (right now), the total number on base is over 1,000 diverse people. You never know what kind of conversation you'll have when you sit down for dinner!

I have two more days to get myself prepared for my field work. On Monday, I should be heading to the Dry Valleys, which are across the McMurdo Sound on the mainland of the continent. Where I'll be heading is labeled with the orange dot on the second map.

Arrival in McMurdo

2010-12-07T19:08:00.008+13:00

I have arrived at McMurdo Station, Antarctica!

Today, I woke up early in Christchurch, packed my bags and headed to the airport. There, I boarded a U.S. Air Force C-17 and flew from New Zealand to Antarctica. It's about a 5-hour flight. There was a big crowd on the plane this year: about 60 people. Only half of us were American. We flew down with a lot of Italian and French scientists who headed to their own bases after they arrived at McMurdo.

The runway that we landed on is built on the seasonal sea ice, so it is called the "ice runway". It's rebuilt each year and used until early or mid-December when the ice starts to break up. In my previous years, I've always arrived after the ice runway has been closed, and have landed instead at Pegasus Airfield, located further back on the permanent ice shelf. So, it was a different landing for me this year! The ice runway is much closer to McMurdo Station, so the journey from the plane to the station was much shorter than I'm used to. You can even see the ice runway clearly from our lab window:
Tonight I'll be getting settled into my room and lab. Tomorrow, I begin the preparations for getting out into the field to get my work done. It'll be good to revisit all of the people that help me do that!

Gearing Up

2010-12-06T15:38:00.008+13:00

Today I went to the U.S. Antarctic Program office in Christchurch to be outfitted for gear I will need in Antarctica. I wear a lot of my own personal clothes and gear, but I also use a lot of special issued gear. The board in the picture shows the variety of clothes they give us: everything from long underwear and socks to coats and hats. We have to try on all of the clothes to make sure they fit.

Because Antarctica is very cold, we have three layers of clothes for warmth. We wear polypro long underwear pants and shirts , and then two layers of fleece. On top of the warm clothes, we have a wind-proof layer of overall pants. Here you can see me wearing my long underwear shirt and pants, topped by my wind pants.The boots I'm wearing are called "bunny boots". They are very insulated and water-proof to make sure our feet stay warm and dry. The insulation makes these boots very bulky and heavy, so walking in them can become hard!

On top of everything, we wear a down parka with a fur-lined hood. The giant red parkas is nicknamed "Big Red". There is a also a light-weight, red wind-breaker, which is called "Little Red". Big Red is very warm, but it is very large and bulky. Unless it's very cold, I prefer to wear Little Red for my field work.

Once we have picked out all of our clothes, we pack everything into the two orange duffel bags. Those two bags contain all of the gear and clothing we will use for the next two months!

Our flight to Antarctica is scheduled for very early tomorrow morning. We have to leave the hotel by 6 A.M. Let's hope the weather over McMurdo stays good so that we can get out of here on time!

In Christchurch, New Zealand

2010-12-05T18:04:00.004+13:00

I have landed safely in Christchurch, New Zealand. This marks the end of the first portion of the journey. I will spend a couple days here getting prepared (and enjoying some summer weather) before I head down to McMurdo.

Check out this photo I took as we were flying over New Zealand near Christchurch. It's a beautiful country!

The river that you see running through the middle is called a "braided river". It's a series of smaller channels of water that twist together and are separated by sand bars. This type of river is found in areas where the ground is easily eroded to create a lot of sediment (which creates the sand bars) and where there are rapid changes in the amount of water flowing in the river. The mountains in the background are geologically young, and easily erode to create that sediment.

Braided rivers are common here in New Zealand, but also in Antarctica. Here's a photo I took a few years ago when I was flying over the Onyx River in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, where you see the same braided pattern:

(You'll notice one thing unique about Antarctica: there are no trees, roads, or houses to give you a sense of size, like you have in the New Zealand photo. This photo was taken from a helicopter pretty high up, but you wouldn't know that if I didn't tell you!)

And I'm off to Antarctica!

2010-12-03T14:00:00.002+13:00

I'm about to head to the Phoenix airport to begin my journey towards McMurdo Station, Antarctica. First, I'll fly commercially to Christchurch, New Zealand. I have a short hop from Phoenix to Los Angeles, followed by a very long flight to Auckland, New Zealand and another short hop to Christchurch, New Zealand. It'll take a total of 24 hours from the time I leave my home in Phoenix until I arrive in Christchurch, but because of the International Date Line, I'll land there 2 days later.

Check out this interactive map if you want to find out more about my travel plans.

I'll be in Christchurch, NZ for 2 days before I finish the trip and fly to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. While in Christchurch, I'll get fitted for all of my Extreme Cold Weather gear, receive some safety training, and of course enjoy some of that great New Zealand summer weather!

Let's hope the weather is good for our travels and that we don't encounter any major delays! The next time I post, it'll be from Christchurch, NZ!

Getting packed to leave the U.S.

2010-12-01T13:20:00.000+13:00

My departure for Antarctica is approaching quickly! I leave for Antarctica on December 3. I'm finishing all of the work that needs to be done at ASU before I leave and getting my personal gear packed up.

Here's my partially-packed suit case. There are normal things in there that everyone packs when they travel: clothes, socks, and shoes. You can see that there aren't a whole lot of clothes. Really, there's just one stack of pants and shirts. We aren't able to bring down a lot of stuff, even though we're there for a long time. I only bring down a few pairs of pants and a couple of shirts, but several sets of under-layer clothes (like long johns and undershirts). Most of the clothes in the stack are fleece, silk, or polypro for warmth. I don't have to pack pajamas, because I always sleep in my long johns. I also pack lots and lots of warm socks. I can tolerate wearing dirty pants and shirts when I'm in the field, but dry socks are like gold! You can see thick socks crammed in all of the corners of the suitcase. (My grandmother has given me most of those socks over many Christmases.) And of course I pack hats, mittens, and hand warmers (just a few, for those really, really cold moments). I also always pack sandals. Those are handy for when you come inside after being out in the field and you want to take off your giant boots and let your feet air out. In the lid of the suitcase there are also some books to read and my notebooks from previous years on the ice. In the small pocket I have things like my camera, batteries and the charger, and my iPod. There's a Christmas present in the suitcase, too. I will be at one of the field camps for Christmas, and every year we play the "gift game". There's something good inside the gift I'm putting in...

The red backpack will be my carry-on during the flight. It has all of my toiletries as well as some warm-weather clothes for my time in New Zealand. I carry all of that stuff on the plane so that, if my luggage gets lost, I can still take a shower and put on clean clothes after the long flight across the Pacific! It also has my passport and other travel documents so that I can get into New Zealand.

There are still a few things that need to be packed. I have to include my eyeglasses, sunglasses, underwear, and other things I'm still using at home. I'll finish packing tonight and tomorrow morning, then I'm off to the airport! Let me know if you notice anything important missing from the suitcase, so that I can make sure to pack it before I go.

Welcome to Season 4!

2010-11-16T13:03:00.002+13:00

Welcome to another field season of research in Antarctica with the polar soils research group!

I am making preparations to leave the U.S. and head to McMurdo Station on December 3. It is a busy time of preparations for me! I have a lot of work to finish up, travel plans to arrange, and supplies and equipment to gather. One big difference from the past three seasons is that I am now based at Arizona State University, so I am far away from my fellow teammates at Dartmouth College. That makes preparations a bit more complicated. But, in just a couple weeks, I'll be on my way.

If you are new to the Polar Soils blog, here is some information that might be useful to you:

Where we go:
When most people think of Antarctica, they think of ice. When you're on the continent of Antarctica, it's referred to as being on the "ice." However, the area we study is a polar desert called the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where the glaciers have retreated. Just like deserts in the U.S., such as the Sonoran Desert where I now live, there's very little precipitation, so there's actually bare soil, not just ice and snow! The red dot on the map shows where McMurdo is located:

What we do:
Our research is in the field of soil biogeochemistry, which is just a big word that means we study the way nutrient elements move in the soil. We are especially interested in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, since these three elements are so important for all forms of life. We study how the living organisms influence nutrients in the soil. All of the animals in the dry valleys are microscopic (except for the scientists, of course). While other areas of Antarctica have penguins and seals, the dry valleys' largest animal is a nematode. A predatory nematode is the top of our foodchain- the equivalent to a lion in the Serengeti! We also study the mosses growing in the dry valley soil. Mosses are the only plants growing in the dry valleys and the only living things you'll find above the soil- the equivalent to the redwood forests in America!

Who we are:
Our research team is a little bit different from last year. There are four soil scientists going to Antarctica from Dartmouth. The leader is Dr. Ross Virginia, a professor at Dartmouth who has been going to Antarctica for many years. Also on the team are me (Becky, a professor at Arizona State University), Jenn (a graduate student at Dartmouth College), and Mike (a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania).

While on the ice, we will continue to work very closely with another group of scientists from Colorado State University led by Dr. Diana Wall that specializes in the nematodes (they have a special nematode blog). Together, all of us study the nutrients and biology of the McMurdo Dry Valley soils.

About the blog:
Our blog is designed to be an educational tool for elementary and middle school classrooms, but all readers are welcome to follow along! Teachers interested in using the blog in their classes are welcome to contact me (contact information available through my website, listed under my Profile on the bottom-right).
On the right-hand side, there are some links with additional information that is useful for both kids and adults. Many links are added throughout the season, so keep an eye on them!

Off the Ice

2010-01-31T09:38:00.002+13:00

Well, we made it off the ice! It was snowing as we left, but we are now warmly back in Christchurch, New Zealand.

We flew back on the same type of airplane we flew in on: A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster. Since it's the end of the season, they're starting to send home a lot of cargo, in addition to scientists. We flew home on a plane carrying one of the helicopters back to New Zealand. We watched on the ice runway as they loaded it.
Now, the season is officially over! It has been successful and productive, and now we are looking ahead to 10 months of labwork and analyses on the samples we took. All of our samples are being shipped home on the ocean vessel that will bring them to the U.S. after our return. Then, we'll be on our way back down again next winter!

One Final Weather Delay?

2010-01-30T09:46:00.010+13:00

We are currently waiting for our transport to Pegasus Airfield to catch our flight back to Christchurch, New Zealand. We woke up this morning to low clouds and snow, so we are concerned that we will have one more weather delay to our field season!

Since weather has had such a big influence on our field season this year, I thought it would be appropriate to blog about some of the neat weather-related sites we've seen this year.

Lenticular CloudsThis is a cloud formation we saw when we were trying to fly to Cape Crozier. Mt. Erebus is the southern-most active volcano in the world, and it sits on Ross Island, overlooking McMurdo Station. Flying to the penguin rookeries on Ross Island has taken us in a circle around Mt. Erebus. The first time we tried to fly to Cape Crozier, it was very windy! These lenticular clouds form at high altitudes when winds moving over a mountain circulate on the downwind side. If the temperature is cold enough, moisture in the air condenses and forms clouds. They are aligned perpendicularly with the wind and form a lens shape, hence the name "lenticular". Pilots tend to avoid lenticular clouds, because when they form, you know there is wind and turbulence!

Low Ceiling

When we finally made it to Cape Crozier, the weather was nice. By the end of the day, however, a cloud system had moved in to cover Ross Island. When that cloud cover sits very low to the ground, it's called a "low ceiling" because the cloud cover is so dense, it's like having a roof over your head. Above the cloud layer, helicopters can fly, because pilots can see in front of them. But, they can't fly through a ceiling, because all they would see is white (and it's dangerous when your pilot can't see in front of him!). If the ceiling isn't too low, pilots can also fly under it. That was the case when we were at Crozier. We could fly above or below the ceiling, just not through it. Luckily for us, our pilot found a "window", or a break in the ceiling, to get us out of Crozier and above the ceiling. We flew at a higher altitude over the island, where we could see over the clouds. So you can see the ice covering the base of Mt. Erebus at higher altitude, and the low ceiling surrounding it. McMurdo Station is below that ceiling! Luckily, our pilot found a hole in the ceiling on the other side of the island that got us back below the ceiling so we could land at McMurdo. This is what it looked like as we were dropping back below the ceiling. Cloud ceiling above our heads, low-elevation coastal Ross Island below.
Cloud MiragesThis is the view we had last night from our lounge window that looks out over the Ross Sea. The mirage is the mirror image of the mountains hovering just above them! This happens when the air is very pure and dry and there's virtually no wind, like last night. There also needs to be a strong difference in air and ground temperature. Light refraction in cold, dense air causes the reflection to occur in the clouds. The mirage we saw moved throughout the evening. Sometimes the reflection was low, so that the actual mountains and reflection melded together, but they would separate again like you see here.

The same weather system that brought us those mirages are what brought us snow this morning, and we're concerned will keep us from leaving for Christchurch today! We are supposed to transport to the airfield in just a couple hours, so we hope the plane will be able to land and take us back north. Keep your fingers crossed!

Shackleton's Hut

2010-01-28T20:40:00.009+13:00

Antarctica has a rich history of exploration. Since the 1800's, explorers have been traveling to Antarctica in search of adventure, scientific discovery, and fame. When we were at Cape Royd's, we were able to visit one of the huts built during that period.

The hut was built for an expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1908. Shackleton and his crew traveled to the McMurdo area on what is called the Nimrod Expedition. A lot was accomplished on this expedition. Some members of the crew were the first to climb Mr. Erebus, the southern-most active volcano that is located on Ross Island. Others reached the south magnetic pole (which is not the same as the geographic pole). However, their main objective was the reach the geographic south pole. Four team members, including Shackleton, set off from Cape Royds and forged a new trail towards the pole in the spring of 1908. Almost a year later, in January 1909, they were within 97 miles of the pole. At that point, they realized that they did not have enough supplies to reach the pole and still be able to return to the hut alive, so they turned around, never making it to the pole. It must've been such a hard decision for Shackleton... to turn back and not reach his goal, even after enduring so much hardship for that goal, in order to ensure that his entire party survived. Still, they had reached a point farther south than anyone else had at that point, which was definitely an accomplishment.

The hut from this expedition still stands today, 100 years later. This was their shelter as they prepared for their journeys- their home-base. The hut was not luxurious! It is small, and basically one large room. A few dividing walls inside the hut were made out of food and fodder supply boxes. In addition to sleeping quarters, the hut housed a biology lab, dark room, printing press, kitchen, library, scientific and surveying equipment, and an acetylene gas generator so that they could have lights!

That big, cast iron stove is how they heated the hut, cooked their meals, baked their bread, and melted ice for water. On the shelves, you can see the remains of their food stores: things like tinned meat, dehydrated vegetables, bottled soup, cabin bread. Not too different from the kind of things we eat in the field now!

Shackleton had his own canvas-lined room, but the other 14 men shared the rest of the space. They lived in two-bed cubicles divided by canvas and slept on home-made beds from spare parts around camp.

It's definitely amazing what these early explorers could do! They persevered through harsh conditions with much fewer resources than we have available to us today. They were able to accomplish amazing things for science through their efforts. It really puts into perspective how relatively easy it is for us to come down and do our research using airplanes, helicopters, trucks, solar energy, and polartec fleece!

This is our last day on the ice! We have packed up the lab, shipped our samples, and tomorrow we should be flying back to Christchurch! The season has gone by very quickly, but it has been a successful and productive one.

(Learn more about the Nimrod Expedition by going here.)

Camp Hair Contest Winner

2010-01-28T14:55:00.002+13:00

The 5 days have passed, and the votes have been tallied. The winner of the 2008-09 Best Camp Hair Contest is...

JULIA!!!!

Julia celebrates her victory in her "fancy duds", flexing her camp hair power.
Congratulations, Julia!

A Little Bit of Green in Antarctica

2010-01-27T15:51:00.003+13:00

As you've seen from my blog, Antarctica is cold, dry, and gray. But, there's one oasis in this polar desert: the McMurdo Greenhouse.

[Photo credit: www.sethwhite.org]

While it looks like any other McMurdo building on the outside (except for the vegetable decorations), inside the greenhouse it is warm, humid, bright, and full of greenery!

[Photo credit: www.sethwhite.org]

Unlike greenhouses in the U.S., the McMurdo Greenhouse is not made of glass. It is too cold for that! Instead, it is a sealed and insulated building, with a giant refrigerator door to get inside. "Sunlight" comes from high intensity discharge lamps, and the walls are covered in reflective foil to increase the light intensity from the lamps. To maintain a proper temperature, the greenhouse is heated by a furnace at night and the lamps during the day.

[photo credit: www.schundler.com]
Because Antarctica's environment is protected by the Antarctic Conservation Act, we are not able to import gardening soil to grow vegetables here. So, the greenhouse uses a hydroponic system to grow vegetables, meaning that vegetables are grown in water instead.

How this works: Each plant is seeded in a "plug". The plug is a short piece of PVC pipe. In the pipe, there's a combination of vermiculite and Perlite (little pellets that you can buy from a company), which give the roots of the plant something to hold onto. The plugs are then placed in the shelves you see in the photo above. The shelves have a circulating reservoir system of water moving through them. The water is heated and aerated, and nutrients are added to the water to be carried directly to the plants growing in the plugs on the shelf. That gives the plant everything it needs! Each day, measurements are made on the water, and the nutrient content and pH are adjusted by hand. All of the water is recycled within the reservoir system for that shelf. There is a separate reservoir system for each type of plant, so water from the peppers doesn't mix with the water for the tomatoes. All of this is maintained by just one person!

The greenhouse grows a variety of vegetables. In the past, we've had lettuce, spinach, chard, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and even flowers! The harvests are mainly useful for the winter crew, when airplanes aren't able to deliver fresh vegetables from New Zealand. The greenhouse can provide enough vegetables for the winter crew (up to 230 people) to have a salad every few days, plus some veggies for the cook to use in regular meals. During the summers, the population at McMurdo is too big for the greenhouse to supply completely, so it can only supplement the shipments of "freshies" flown down from New Zealand. But, more importantly, it provides a little piece of "summer" relaxation to the folks experiencing months of cold and gray, and many people visit just for the atmosphere.

Besides the great environment for relaxation and the ability to eat fresh vegetables, I've used the greenhouse in the past to test out our field equipment. The machines we use to measure gas flux (the LICOR) can measure not only soil respiration, but also photosynthesis (which is, essentially, the reverse process of respiration. So, instead of measuring a production of CO2, the machine measures a reduction in CO2.) Since the mosses we study in the dry valleys are so slow-growing, we need to know that the LICOR is working perfectly to measure such small amounts of photosynthesis before we take it to the field. The best place to test out the machinery is in a place where there's a lot of photosynthesis: a greenhouse!

However, this year, they decided not to open the greenhouse for the summer and rely completely on shipments of freshies, which is very unfortunate. I miss my regular visits with the plants, and we couldn't test our LICOR! I hope they change their mind for next summer.

Orca Sighting

2010-01-24T17:15:00.006+13:00

As we come into late summer here in Antarctica, the sea ice covering the Ross Sea has melted back almost as far as McMurdo. That means that our helicopter rides back to McMurdo from the dry valleys start to scoot along the edge of open ocean, rather than traveling over solid ice. This makes for great sight-seeing, because there's so much life in the open ocean, even all the way down here! On the ice edge, we see penguins (both Emperor and Adelie), seals, and a lot of whales.

When we flew back from F6 on Saturday, we saw a lot of orcas. My camera doesn't do a great job from a distance, but in this video you can see a lot of them surfacing:

Orcas live just about everywhere in the world, but they tend to prefer polar waters, such as the Ross Sea of Antarctica where I am. They tend to stick to coastal areas, because that's where their food lives. While orcas are commonly called "killer whales", not all of them behave like killers. There are several types of orcas that we could see down here: Type A, B, and C. Type C are the smaller orcas that you see in the video. They have a duller white saddle (that white patch behind their dorsal fin) and eat fish. That's why they're along the ice edge here. The ice has just melted and broken away, so there's a lot of fish now without protection!

Type B are bigger and eat larger animals like seals (and penguins, if they were able to catch them, but penguins are usually too fast). In fact, when I met Sir David Attenborough last weekend, he narrated for us footage the BBC had recently shot of several orcas creating a wave to knock a seal off of a floating ice chunk and into the water so they could eat it!

Type A are the biggest and eat even larger animals, like minke whales. We also have a lot of minke whales in our waters here. In fact, we can see them from outside our lab window in the channel cut by the icebreaker! Minke whales are smaller, baleen whales. Baleen whales are a type of whale that have a plate for filtering small plankton from the water (rather than teeth for eating animals). So, minkes are related to humpback whales and Right whales, which are also baleen whales. It's easy to tell the difference between an orca and a minke because of the size, but also the shape of the dorsal fin. A minke's dorsal fin is small and curved. It looks kinda like the satellite radio antennas that you see on cars. (See what I mean using the photo on Wikipedia.)

We are hopefully going to the field tomorrow to visit Cape Crozier, the final penguin rookery I'd like to sample. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates!

3rd Annual Camp Hair Contest!

2010-01-22T21:50:00.010+13:00

It is time for the Third Annual McMurdo Field Camp Hair Contest!

The water restrictions in the dry valleys means that we are not able to shower or wash our hair while we're out at field camps. That means that people's hair gets very dirty and oily, which of course leads to some very fabulous hair-do's! This is what we call having "camp hair." Having great camp hair is a matter of pride, and the person with the best camp hair is honored throughout McMurdo. So, once again, I'm going to leave it up to everyone reading my blog to decide who has the best camp hair for the 2009-10 field season. Review the photos below of our "camp hair" contestants, and send in your vote! Anyone reading this is welcome to vote, and can do so by sending an email with your choice to me.

Let's meet this year's contestants!

Michael:Stream Team member Mike has been living in the field at F6 since October, far from the comforts of civilization such as running water and a razor... and probably a mirror. Unfortunately for Mike, his "fierce grimace" has not aided the success of his attempted life as a pirate marauding the Ross Sea.

Julia:Fresh after her visit to the Wool Hat Salon, Julia is sporting her fashionable hat-hair look. Nine and a half hours of hiking, 4 soil pits, and an 85 pound backpack are all ingredients for this stylish look. See how happy she is to be able to finally take her hat off?

Jeff:Environmental engineering graduate student and temporary dweller of F6 Camp, Jeff engineers this gravity-defying look every day. Weekly camp showers at Lake Hoare can't keep his hair down! His sheer enthusiasm for field work is evident in this photo!

There they are: the 2009-10 season's Best Camp Hair contestants. May the voting begin! The champion Camp Hair will be declared in 5 days.

Back at F6

2010-01-21T18:04:00.005+13:00

We finally made it back to one of the penguin rookeries that we needed to visit. After two days of trying to get to Cape Crozier but being stopped by bad weather, we decided to try for Cape Bird instead. Ross and I made it there on Wednesday. Finally, we were able to get some more of our sampling done! We did the same time of sampling at Cape Bird as we did at Cape Royds. It is interesting to do this at different rookeries because each of the three rookeries we want to visit have different sizes of penguin colonies living there. Cape Royds has several thousand breeding pairs of penguins, and Cape Bird has about 25,000. Cape Crozier has over 100,000! That means that "high activity" will be different at each of the rookeries, and we'll be able to learn more about the influence of different levels of penguin activity than we would at just one site.

There was one very curious penguin at one of our sampling spots. It wanted to inspect everything we were doing. At one point it even pecked at the shovel I was using! Here it is approaching Ross to see what he's doing with that sample bag:

I learned something very interesting about Adelie penguins while I was there! They have spiny tongues! Penguins eat krill, which are small shrimp-like animals that live in the ocean. The spines on the Adelie's tongue helps them hold onto and swallow the little krill. Here's a photo of an Adelie tongue that I found online:

[photo credit: www.penguinscience.com]

So that's what I did yesterday. Today I am back at F6 for the next few days to finish up some projects in the Fryxell Basin. Let's hope the weather stays as beautiful as it is today!

There's more than just penguins here!

2010-01-20T21:30:00.000+13:00

When people think of animals that live in Antarctica, they almost always think of penguins, seals, and whales. And, while those animals do live down here, they don't live on most of the continent. They only live in or near the water, and not on the actual continent (except for penguin rookeries, like I've shown you). But, there are animals that do live on the actual continent! You just can't see them, because they're microscopic. Most of our studies focus on how these animals respond to changes in environmental conditions and influence biogeochemical cycling. So, it's important for me to tell you more about them! Here's some information about the main types of micro-organisms that live in Antarctic soils.

Nematodes
Also called roundworms, nematodes live EVERYWHERE in the world. You can find them in every biome in the world. They live in water, soil, ice, even in other animals! They are the most abundant animal in the world. In the dry valleys, we find more nematodes than any other animal. They are what our collaborators at Colorado State focus on studying. We have three main species that live here. The most numerous species, Scottnema lindsayae, is in the photo to the left.

Nematodes eat a lot of different things. Some, like the guy at the left, eat bacteria. Others eat fungi or algae, and some are even predators that eat other microscopic soil organisms. In the dry valleys, a predatory nematode is the top of the food chain!

Rotifers
Rotifers also live in a lot of different environments, including fresh water, saltwater, soils, and other watery environments. A rotifer eats by waving the hairs around its mouth (at the top, in this picture) to catch things floating in the water. The moving action around their mouth looks kind of like a wheel, which is how they got the name ROTifer (like rotate). The "foot" (at the bottom of the picture) is to anchor the rotifer when it doesn't want to move.

Tardigrades
Tardigrades are also called water bears, and looking at the picture I think you can see why! They even have claws at the end of their feet, which you can see in this very close-up microscrope picture that Uffe took of a tardigrade foot. The claws let them hold on to something as they float through water or the water-filled spaces in the soil. Tardigrades eat with a stylet that they use to pierce animal and plant cell walls.

Tardigrades are able to live in a lot of extreme environments, and are found everwhere from the Himalayas to the ocean floor to Antarctica. They can withstand the pressure of a vaccuum, radiation, dehydration, and both incredibly high and low temperatures. There are even experiments that test tardigrades' ability to live in open space! In the dry valleys, they especially like to live in the moss and algae patches, where food and water are readily available.

The soil environment in the dry valleys is a very hard place to be an animal. There's not a lot of water, not a lot to eat, and it is very cold! Most of these micro-organisms have a special ability to help survive in such a harsh environment. They can go into anhydrobiosis, which essentially means they can freeze-dry themselves. They can push out all of their water and curl up, so that they don't freeze and die. Their metabolism drops to almost a stand-still! They can stay in anhydrobiosis for a very long time, and immediately wake up if water becomes available.

In addition to invertebrates like these guys, we also study microbes: the bacteria and fungi. These are more abundant in the soils than the invertebrates and have a larger role in the cycles we study. We look at the bacteria and fungi through our lab work and measuring CO2 flux. But, they aren't as cute to look at in a blog posting!

Waiting for a Helo... AGAIN!

2010-01-19T15:59:00.003+13:00

We've been trying for the past two days to get to Cape Crozier, one of the other penguin rookeries we want to sample. But, bad weather strikes again! We haven't been able to make it. So, we've been spending our time processing samples in the lab.

It's very busy in the lab when we're all working. A lot of different things are happening at once. In this video, Uffe is in the laminar flow hood (in the back) weighing soil samples to be extracted for invertebrates, which he puts on the sink for Diana to process. She uses tap water to rinse the soil through a sieve and capture the invertebrates in a very small-mesh sieve. Zach is on the other side of the lab centrifuging samples, and every now and then he pops into view to bring Uffe a new sample. Once Uffe has poured soil into a beaker for invertebrate extraction, he then pours part of the sample into a sieve for me. I sieve the sample to remove all of the rocks, then pour the soil into a bag for storage. We'll take that bag of soil back to Dartmouth to measure chemistry. The rocks go into the waste bucket, and I wipe the sieve for the next sample. Meanwhile, Julia is measuring soil samples into tin cans for soil moisture. She keeps going to the fridge to get a new sample, weigh out 20 g, record the weight, then bring it back to the fridge. Jenn is just off-camera measuring pH and EC on her soil samples.

Hopefully we'll be able to make it to a rookery tomorrow!

Dr. Becky Meets her Hero in Antarctica

2010-01-17T19:35:00.006+13:00

We've had a very special guest in town at McMurdo for the past week or two. Sir David Attenborough is down filming for his new nature series called Frozen Planet. This is the man who has narrated so many great nature series for the BBC. I grew up with The Trials of Life. You might know him from Planet Earth. You might not recognize his name or his face, but you know his voice, especially if you're my age. I have been SO EXCITED that he's here, because he is one of the inspirations behind me becoming a biologist. My sister and I have watched The Trials of Life over and over again since we were kids. Sir David's films make the many amazing aspects of our natural world so accessible and exciting to kids (and adults!), and he's been a major inspiration for most biologists my age.

So, I can't even tell you how excited I was when I actually got to meet Sir David last night!! I was able to tell him how big of an influence he has been and about what kind of research I do here in the dry valleys. Here's me with my hero:I also asked Sir David what he thought was the most amazing thing he's seen in Antarctica. His answer: the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. That's the mountain range that runs through the continent dividing it into an East and West half. It's one of the longest mountain chains in the world! Mountain ranges like the Trans-Antarctics are created through a process called "uplift", where two plates are pushed together, and the force of them being pushed together causes the contact point between the two plates to rise up. The presence of the mountains is what prevents the ice sheet from flowing in the valleys, creating the dry valleys where I work. Sir David thinks they're amazing because not only are they beautiful and created through such an amazing feat of nature, but because of the huge challenge they've posed for humans for over a century. When the early explorers were seeking the South Pole, they started from the Ross Sea (where I am) and had to attempt to cross through the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. Crossing these mountains posed a huge danger and required a large amount of hard work under grueling conditions for the early explorers, and frequently groups were stopped by the presence of the mountains. It's just one way that nature is more powerful than man!

So, last night was a very special moment for me. When I was a kid watching the Trials of Life on video, I never would've thought that many years later I'd meet Sir David Attenborough all the way in Antarctica!

Penguins Aren't Just Cute: They Influence Soil!

2010-01-15T13:40:00.007+13:00

Yesterday, all four of us went to Cape Royds where there is an Adelie penguin rookery.

Adelie (pronounced uh-dell-ee) penguins are one of two species of penguin that are found in this area. (The other species is the Emperor penguin.) Adelies are fairly small penguins. You could easily fit one in your school backpack. They are easy to identify by the white ring around their eye. Adelies mate and nest in rookeries like this one on the rocky capes of Ross Island, which is made out of volcanic basalt. Adelies make their nests on the ground by creating a hollowed-out bowl and carrying lots of small rocks into it. Right now, the Adelies still have some chicks that they're taking care of. You can see one huddled underneath its parent in a nest in this photo, just to the right of center. Adelies nest on land, but they spend the rest of their time out on the sea ice, because they eat krill in the ocean. So, the open ocean isn't very far from this rookery. I'm standing very close to the edge of the cliff to take this picture, and the ocean wraps all the way around the peninsula. You can see it on the horizon at the other end of the rookery. Because they eat from the ocean, their guano smells very fishy. It is a smelly place to be!

We are interested in the soil at penguin rookeries because penguin guano is very high in nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen and phosphorus are two key elements that we focus on in the dry valleys with many of our experiments (like the stoichiometry experiment where we add the solutions containing N and P). The soils at penguin rookeries are naturally very high in N and P because of all the penguin poo, which makes it a nice comparison to have for our experiment. I am interested in knowing how soil organisms and nutrient cycling respond to such high levels of N and P in Antarctica, so penguin rookeries are the place to find out!

We sampled soils from four different types of locations at the Cape Royds rookery. We sampled from soils in a nesting area (the areas that are really orangey pink from all of the penguin guano), areas outside nesting grounds but still highly trafficked by penguins (the gray areas in the photo), areas with very low penguin activity (just the occasional passer-through), and areas not trafficked by penguins at all. We took soil samples from these different locations, and we'll measure their chemistry and microbial community. The soil here is really hard and compacted from all of the penguin foot traffic. In this video, you can see how hard Ross has to dig to get a soil sample. Jenn was helping take samples by opening bags for Ross, and Julia was in charge of labeling. Meanwhile, I was documenting every sample location with my camera and by drawing maps, so that we would know exactly where every sample came from.

In addition to taking soil samples to measure chemistry, I also measured CO2 flux to estimate the amount of respiration coming from the soil organisms. Because there's so much more nitrogen and phosphorus, the respiration rates were about ten times higher here than they are in the dry valleys!I also took a lot of extra soil from these areas so that I can set up a miniature stoichiometry experiment in the laboratory and do similar fertilizations as the ones we're doing in the field. So now our lab refrigerator is full of stinky penguin soils that will be shipped back to Dartmouth!
I hope to visit two other penguin rookeries that are on Ross Island: Cape Bird and Cape Crozier. You can see on this map where they are in respect to McMurdo and Cape Royds. (The dry valleys are on the mainland about 70 miles to the west.) Hopefully I will be able to tell you more about other penguin rookeries in the coming weeks!

Measuring Biotic Activity

2010-01-12T21:03:00.002+13:00

Today, Julia and I went to the Lake Bonney basin to take some measurements on the stoichiometry plots. This is the experiment I posted about a couple days ago, where we add carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus to the soil to see how it influences soil organisms and nutrient cycling. We do this experiment at two locations: Lake Fryxell basin (where I posted from before) and Lake Bonney basin (where we were today). We use these two sites because they naturally have very different nutrient conditions. Bonney has a lot more nitrogen, and Fryxell has a lot more phosphorus. That means that the two sites might respond differently to the nutrient additions, which would be very interesting!

One of the ways we measure the response of the biota is by measuring carbon dioxide flux. When most soil organisms respire, they produce carbon dioxide (abbreviated CO2). Humans do this when we breath, too. We breath in oxygen and breath out CO2. Soil organisms, from bacteria to nematodes, also respire to produce CO2. By measuring the amount of CO2 coming out of the soil, we are measuring how much the soil organisms are respiring. We hope to see an increase in respiration when we add nutrients (specifically, more respiration when we add C and P to Bonney and when we add C and N to Fryxell).

After adding the nutrient treatments to the plots like we did a few days ago, we go back and measure CO2 flux. We do this using a machine called an Infrared Gas Analyzer (abbreviated IRGA. It is made by a company called LI-COR, so we usually call the machine the LICOR). Here's Julia learning to use the LICOR: This is a fancy, expensive machine (about $25,000 for the whole set-up) that nests over the soil and sucks air from the space just above the soil. That air is sent through the tubing to the yellow box, which contains the IRGA. The IRGA measures how much CO2 is in the air space above the soil and how much the concentration of CO2 changes over one minute. If the soil organisms are respiring, we will see an increase in CO2 in that air space at a certain rate, called the "CO2 flux". We hope to see a bigger flux rate when we add nutrients.

We finally had a day of nice weather in the field, so we were not delayed for once! We are back in the lab now at McMurdo processing more of our soil samples from these stoichiometry plots. We head back to the field on Thursday, hopefully to visit a penguin rookery!

Snowfall in the Dry Valleys

2010-01-10T17:58:00.009+13:00

I've spent the past five days in the dry valleys. As you've heard, we were weather-delayed getting out there. Then weather delayed my team from meeting me there. Then, my team got stuck there with me and couldn't get back to McMurdo. There was a lot of snow!

That snow doesn't stick around long. We don't have to wait for warm temperatures to melt the snow in order to see it disappear. In the dry valleys, the air is so dry that the snow will sublimate: turn directly from solid (snow) to gas (water vapor) and disappear from our view. On Thursday morning, there was a little over an inch of snow on the ground, but it all disappeared that day even though the air temperature never got above freezing.

These are all photos of roughly the same scene behind our hut at F6, looking north at the Kukri Hills. Here it is at 9:00 in the morning with an inch of snow, while it was still snowing a little bit. You can't even see the mountains because the clouds are so low:

And at noon:

And at 2:30 in the afternoon:

And at 6:00 pm:

And 7:30 pm:

And by midnight, it was gone:

Similarly, another group here has a camera set up in a different valley, called Wright Valley, and are taking time-lapse photos of one particular area. You can see snow come and go over the course of hours! Click here to see it on YouTube.

We think that most of the snow turns into water vapor, but some of it does melt. That extra moisture in the soil will be really important for the organisms living in the soil that are usually water-deprived. To find out how much moisture was getting added, we decided to take soil samples under the snow as it was ablating. Every few hours, we scraped away the snow and took soil samples from the surface (0-2 cm into the ground) and just below the surface (2-5 cm into the ground). We'll measure the soil moisture of those soil samples to see how much water melts into the ground from the snow and whether it ever trickles down to lower depths in the soil.

Now that we're finally all back in the lab at McMurdo (but barely, we almost got stuck at Marble Point, the helicopter fueling station, for the night!), I spent the day weighing out samples for soil moisture. Tomorrow, I will know how much the moisture was influenced by the snow, and how quickly it disappeared!

Tomorrow, I'm heading to the field with Julia, Zach, and Bishwo to sample and treat the stoichiometry plots that are at Lake Bonney. It is supposed to be a day trip, though, so there shouldn't be any getting stuck.

Stoichiometry Sampling... a Little Late!

2010-01-06T22:05:00.004+13:00

We finally got a small enough window in the bad weather for me to get out to the field yesterday. Now I'm back at Lake Fryxell. The work that needs to be done right now is the annual treatment of our Stoichiometry Plots. These are for a long-term experiment that has been going on for several years. We hypothesize that, if the climate warms, there will be more liquid water. With that liquid water comes more nutrients in the soil. We want to know how the soil organisms respond to that nutrient and water pulses to influence nutrient cycling so that we can predict how climate change might influence the soils. So, we are adding water and nutrients to simulate this type of change. Every year we add more nutrients and every two years we take soil samples to measure the response.

To add the treatments to the plots, we have to bring a LOT of water to the field: 775 pounds of water! That means we need a lot of team members to help us carry the carboys of water solutions. Because we've had so much bad weather, our team has had to split up a lot, so only 3 of us were being sent to Fryxell to do all of the work sampling and treating the plots. It is myself, Bishwo from Brigham Young, and Zach from Colorado State. Unfortunately, the weather went sour just about as soon as I landed, so Bishwo and Zach couldn't make it to join me! I did all of the soil sampling by myself, so that the samples could be sent back to the lab for processing. They had to wait overnight, because no helicopter could come pick them up. Luckily, there was another window in the bad weather this morning, and Zach and Bishwo were able to join me for our work, and that same helicopter took our samples home to be processed while we added the treatments.

We needed to add water solutions containing carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon+nitrogen, carbon+phosphorus, or just water (as a control) to eight sets of replicate plots at Fryxell. We carry the solutions to the field in 35 ten-liter carboys, and then transfer 5.6 L at a time to pour jugs with sprinkle caps to be applied to the plots. It takes a lot of organization and communication to apply the treatments to the plots without messing up. We can't add the wrong solution to the wrong pour jug, or pour the wrong solution to the wrong plot. If we mess up and add a nutrient to a plot that's not supposed to receive nutrients, we ruin years worth of data and the future of a long-term experiment! So, it was a challenge to do the work with so few people in a short amount of time, but without rushing and messing up. We worked out a system where I filled the pour jugs for Zach and Bishwo, who were each assigned to a particular nutrient treatment. We check and double-check that I'm filling their jug with the correct solution. Then I direct them to the correct plot to apply their treatment using a map. We have to check and double-check that they're at the correct plot before applying the treatment to make absolutely sure that the wrong solution doesn't get used. They use a fiberglass cone to contain the water to the necessary area while they pour in a spiral pattern. Otherwise, the wind would blow it away from the plot! Once they've applied the nutrient solution, they come back to be refilled. We're constantly talking to each other and looking where we're going. Here's a short view of how it worked:

Unfortunately, the weather went bad again, and now Zach and Bishwo are stuck at F6 with me! It's snowing outside as I type. But, at least the work is done and the samples are at home. The rest of the Dartmouth crew is busy in the lab processing the samples, because we're planning to do the second site for the Stoichiometry Experiment on Friday!

McMurdo Weather

2010-01-04T11:52:00.010+13:00

After 4 days at station working in the lab, we were supposed to be going back to the field today. But we have yet another bad-weather day that won't allow us to fly! So this is a good time to blog about weather in McMurdo.

We are in a polar desert. That means that there is very little precipitation, just like deserts in the U.S. But this is a polar desert, which means it is very cold, not hot like deserts in the U.S. We do get storms here, but they are mostly made up of wind and clouds and involve only a little bit of precipitation. The little bit of precipitation we get comes as snow, and most of it returns to the air before it melts into liquid water on the ground (that's called sublimation). So, it occasionally snows in the dry valleys, but when it does, it usually only looks like this for a few hours before it disappears.
Right now, we have a snow system over us. In this radar image, you can see where I am right now at McMurdo Station (at the "You Are Here" arrow). There's a big bunch of clouds right over us and the dry valleys where we're trying to go! There's not a whole lot of snow coming down. There's just a dusting on the ground, but it really restricts visibility, especially over the ice. Here is a picture looking out of our lab window across McMurdo Sound on a normal, sunny day. You can see all the way across the ice to the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and the dry valleys where we do our research.

And here's a view out of our window today.

You can't see very far! And since the ice is white and the view ahead is white, helicopter pilots can't see the difference between the ground and the sky, which makes it unsafe to fly. We've had more snow than usual this summer. I've heard from people here earlier than me this spring that at one point there were eight inches of snow on the ground in the dry valleys! That means there's more moisture on the ground from the little bit of the snow that melts, and the soils are wetter than normal. Since the soils are so water-limited, that can change a lot!

Though it's too dangerous to fly, and it's cold and there are snow flurries, it is still not truly bad weather. This area can get far worse storms that include really strong winds and white-out conditions. The strongest and most dangerous type of weather is called a "herbie". Herbies are very strong windstorms coming from the south that bring along a lot of blown snow and very cold wind chills. They can come without much warning, and people will suddenly find themselves with no visibility and dangerously low temperatures. Luckily, they are not very common, and I haven't been here for a herbie yet. I have been here for a different type of windstorm called a katabatic wind. This occurs when cold air from the south gets pushed up higher in elevation to go over a mountain (like the Trans-Antarctic Mountains). Normally, cold air sits lower on the ground and warm air rises higher, because warm air is less dense. When cold air gets forced higher due to a mountain, it'll eventually reach the top of the mountain and then rush back down to the ground on the other side. It rushes down because it gets pushed down by the warm air waiting for it on the other side and squeezed into a smaller space of a valley. This can cause huge, fast gusts of wind that rush down the valleys where we work. We've seen tents be blown away before, and at times entire buildings have been blown apart. These happen most in the winter when there is a lot of cold air coming from the south, but there are occasionally katabatics in the summers, too.

To manage safety during these different types of weather, we use a rating system that restricts activity for people on base. Condition 3 means the weather is fine, and people can move about normally. Condition 2 means stronger winds and colder temperatures, and you have to receive permission to leave the base. Condition 1 means the weather has gotten really bad, and you're not allowed to leave the building or vehicle that you're currently in. So if it turns to Condition 1, you'd better hope you're in the Galley so you can have something to eat while you wait! We can find out what Condition we're in using these electronic notices posted around station, as well as colored lights that are mounted on the outside of the buildings.Even though the weather right now is bad and it's snowing, it's still Condition 3. We can move around base, we just can't fly. Our weather service on base is predicting snow for the next several days, so it's not looking good to get back into the field!

Our Group is Complete!

2010-01-02T21:14:00.001+13:00

Our other two group members, Ross and Julia, arrived yesterday in Antarctica. Our group is now complete! We've been very busy working in the lab, but we plan to head back to the field on Monday. That's all the news for now!

Back at the Lab

2009-12-31T20:45:00.003+13:00

Jen and I finally made it back to McMurdo Station! We got stuck at Fryxell camp for a couple of days. The weather over McMurdo was bad, so the helicopters couldn't leave to pick us up. But, the weather in the dry valleys was very nice, so it was a nice place to be stuck. It's good to be back in town, though, because we have to process all of those samples we took to start getting some data! Since we were a day and a half behind, it's been a very busy couple of days (but at least we had a chance to shower and put on clean clothes for the first time in 8 days).

There are a lot of chemical and physical properties we measure on our soil samples. Some of them get done here at McMurdo, and some wait until we get home. One of the basic things we measure here on our soil samples is soil moisture. We want to know how much water is in the soil. Knowing how much water is in the soil tells us how much might be available for organisms living in the soil that need water. (It also helps us standardize all of the other measurements we make. If we express the amount of nutrients per gram of dry soil, it's standardized among all of the different soils we measure, rather than changing based on the amount of water in each sample if we expressed it per gram "fresh" soil.) We measure soil moisture by simply weighing a subsample of the soil, placing it in an oven at 105°C, then weighing it again after 24 hours. The weight lost was water that evaporated from the soil. Jenn and I both have weighed a lot of samples to measure moisture over the past two days.
I also started working on the moss samples I took. To measure the nutrients in the moss, I first have to rinse away all of the soil that's mixed up with the moss. I have to do that using a microscope so that I can see that all of the little pebbles have been rinsed away.

Yesterday, our colleagues from Colorado State arrived from the U.S. So, the lab has become very busy! Tomorrow, the other two group members from Dartmouth are scheduled to arrive, and then our group will be complete! So will 2009!

Getting Our Feet Wet to Sample Moss

2009-12-28T16:43:00.013+13:00

Most people think of Antarctica as being a big, barren land with no animals or plants living on it. That is not true! In fact, there are plants growing in Antarctica, even here in the dry valleys. You just have to look very closely to be able to see them, because they are small! The only plants we have in the dry valleys are several species of moss. They grow very slowly and are generally found only in small patches.

Moss has a lot of challenges to face to grow in the dry valleys. It's very dry here, so they cannot get much water to grow. The only time water is plentiful is during the 14 weeks of the year when the meltwater streams are flowing, and that water is only available if you're right next to the stream. Sunlight is also a problem. During the winter there's no sunlight for photosynthesis, but during the summer the sun can be so intense that it can actually damage plants. So, it takes a very hardy plant to be able to grow here! Most of the time you do not find moss that is lush and green, because it's usually too cold, too dry, or there's too much sun damage. Sometimes, though, you find moss that was recently uncovered by the water or a rock, and it is green and happy.

But, moss is the only above-ground life in the dry valleys. All of the other organisms live in the soil, not on it. So, moss are in a way like the redwood forests of the Antarctic Dry Valleys! They are one of the few sources of food for soil organisms. When mosses die, they decompose in the soil, just like plants in warmer climates. The carbon and nutrients released from mosses when they decompose are probably a very important part of the soil food web.

We want to learn more about moss's role in the carbon and nutrient cycles in the dry valleys, so one of our projects is to find out where they are getting their nutrients. Mosses grow in the soil like other plants, but are always very close to water. Are their nutrients coming from the soil or the water? Do mosses take up all of the available nutrients, or just some? We're trying to find out by taking from each location a moss sample, soil sample, stream water sample, and groundwater sample. (Groundwater on the edge of a stream can be very different from the stream water, and is more likely the water being used by moss when stream flow is low, which is most of the time!) We will measure the ratio of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in the moss tissue and see if it reflects the ratio in the soil or the water. If the ratio (called "stoichiometry") of the moss is more like that of the water than the soil, that would suggest that the nutrient source is the water. We've visited many of the streams and wet areas around Lake Fryxell and taken moss, soil, and water samples. You can see the patch of moss at the base of the rock that my backpack is on. Jenn is in Lost Seal Stream taking a sample of stream water. She pulls the water up into a giant syringe, then snaps a filter onto the end of the syringe and sloooooowly squirts the water through the filter to remove all of the sediment. If you click on the photo to make it bigger, you can see that between my backpack and Jenn is my setup for collecting groundwater. We use a miniature well system called a piezometer. I insert a long tube into the ground using stiff wire, then attach a hand-powered vacuum pump onto the end of it to suck water out from below the stream bed into a flask. The water comes out very, very silty so I will have to filter it using a more powerful setup back at the lab. You can see a groundwater sample on the rock next to my backpack (it's the bottle with the orange label).

We've visited several streams to do sampling like this so far. Each stream that flows into Lake Fryxell has a different ratio of nutrients. If the nutrient content of moss changes the same way that the streams change, this would be a clue that nutrients are coming from the stream and that mosses use all the nutrients that are available. If the nutrient content of the moss doesn't change with the stream and soil, this would be a clue that the mosses only take up a certain amount of nutrients no matter what is available. That would suggest that their role in nutrient cycling is more stable and less likely to change if nutrient availability changes.

This is one of the projects that Jenn and I have been working on this field this past week. We are trying to return to McMurdo Station tonight to process our samples and get ready for the next field project, but the weather is bad and the helicopters can't come get us! Hopefully we will get home tonight or tomorrow morning.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-26T11:19:00.005+13:00

Merry Christmas from Lake Hoare, Taylor Valley, Antarctica!

Before we left F6 to come to Lake Hoare, Santa and his elves came to visit us by helicopter. They brought us a giant box of "freshies": fresh vegetables, fruit, and homemade cookies and bread! We aren't normally able to get a lot of freshies down here, especially in the field, so it was a very wonderful treat!
We arrived at Lake Hoare and were set to work decorating. We decorated Christmas cookies, put up the Christmas tree, and made a gingerbread house.
Then, we had a big family dinner! There are scientists from many different projects gathered here, so there were 15 people for dinner. After dinner, we played the "gift game" by the Christmas tree. I got a cool, new water bottle! Now, in Antarctica, it is the day after Christmas, and it is time to get back to work! We'll be hiking over the glacier to Lake Fryxell camp to sample mosses along some of the streams.

Changes Brought by Permafrost Melt

2009-12-24T14:35:00.009+13:00

We've been in the field for a couple days now taking soil samples. One of the projects we've been working on is to study the effects of permafrost melt water seeps on soil chemistry.

Beneath the soil in the dry valleys there is permafrost. Permafrost is permanently-frozen ground. Beneath the surface, the temperatures are so cold that the water associated with the soil is always frozen, making the soil in the permafrost a frozen block. In the Lake Fryxell basin, where we are, the permafrost starts about 30 cm (about 1 foot) beneath the soil. When the ground gets warm enough, the permafrost can start to melt, and that water moves up through the soil and appears on the surface as a wet patch like this:
As that water moves up through the soil, there are a lot of ions, including nutrients, that get dissolved and move up through the soil with the water. We want to know how much nutrients are moving in the soil profile with that water and how much that changes soil nutrient cycling overall. To study that, we have to dig a lot of soil pits. That's what Jenn is doing in this photo. We dig pits both inside and outside the seep patches to see how their soil nutrients differ.In the pits, we take soil samples from the wall of the pit along the depth of the soil profile. That way we can measure the ion concentrations in each layer.
Last season was a particularly warm year, so there were a LOT o f permafrost seep patches all over the Fryxell basin. We dug many pits and found that nutrients were much more abundant in the seep patches than dry soil, especially at the top near the surface. With more ions and nutrients in them, the seep patches are a very different habitat for soil organisms than what would normally exist in dry soil. That is why we're interested in studying the seep patches. Nutrient cycles could change a lot when permafrost melts, because more nutrients become available and there's more water for organisms to use while they process the nutrients.

This year we're digging more pits and taking similar samples, but we're specifically interested in the sulfur cycle this time. We found that the ion sulfate (SO4) is very abundant in seep patches, but not at the very bottom of the soil pit near the melting permafrost. Other scientists have found that there are a lot of bacteria at the bottom of soil pits near the permafrost that use sulfate instead of oxygen to breathe. These are called "sulfate-reducing bacteria" and they live all over the world. We think that maybe permafrost melting releases a lot of sulfate, but near the bottom layer the sulfate is used up by the sulfate-reducing bacteria. Other scientists have also found that some of the bacteria in the dry valleys use a very old metabolic pathway for sulfate reduction, and we are looking to see if this metabolic pathway is being used by sulfate-reducing bacteria near the permafrost, and how much their activity can change the soil sulfur cycle when permafrost melts. It requires a lot of digging! So far we have sampled 7 soil pits.

Now we have moved camps, and we're now sitting on Lake Hoare. We will be doing some field work here, as well as enjoying the Christmas holiday with our friends from other science groups. It should be a good two days here on Lake Hoare!

Finally in the Field

2009-12-22T23:27:00.005+13:00

We finally made it out to our first field site in the Dry Valleys. We were supposed to have left yesterday, but the weather was too bad for the helicopters to fly. Today, though, the weather was decent enough to get us out in the morning, and here we are in Taylor Valley!

We do our field work in the dry valleys. These are the valleys in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains that dissect the continent. The presence of the mountains prevent the ice sheet from moving into the valleys, so they are de-glaciated. It is a desert, so there is not enough snow to maintain ice cover on the ground. There is only about 2% of the continent that is not covered in ice, and the dry valleys are a large part of that 2%. Here is a map of the main area of the McMurdo Dry Valleys:
We do most of our work in Taylor Valley. There are three lakes in Taylor Valley, and right now we are on the eastern-most lake, Lake Fryxell, at F-6 Camp. The lakes are covered in an ice cap, but there is liquid water beneath it. That thin strip of white coming in from the left side of the photo is part of Lake Fryxell. These lakes are fed by glacial meltwater streams. That's Commonwealth Glacier in the background, and there are several streams from it that flow into Fryxell. So, there is liquid water in the dry valleys, but only in certain places. If you're not near a lake, stream, or glacier, there's not a lot of water for you to use.

The soil in the dry valleys is very rocky and sandy. Most of the soil comes from rocks that were left by the glaciers that once covered the area a long time ago. So, not all of the soil originates from inside Taylor Valley. Some of it comes from the volcano across McMurdo Sound. Some of it comes from further inland on the continent.

Since we're a day behind, we immediately started doing field work when we were dropped off by the helicopter. So, I'm pretty worn out and it's late at night. I'll blog more about what we're working on tomorrow, after I've had some rest!

Snow School

2009-12-21T14:42:00.002+13:00

Hello everyone! I'm Jenn, one of the new grad students on the team. On Friday, I headed off to snow school for some overnight training in the field. After a brief introduction at McMurdo, we took the bus to a hut on the sea ice and learned how to use some of the gear in our survival kits. Then we walked over to our campsite on the snow and practiced setting up two large Scott tents and six smaller tents. We even built an open kitchen out of ice blocks, complete with countertops and benches! While some people started boiling water on the stoves for dinner and hot drinks, others started digging trenches in the snow to sleep in overnight. While my trench was pretty much a rectangular hole in the ground, some really enthusiastic campers built a snow palace with staircases and underground tunnels leading to multiple rooms. However, my little trench kept out the wind and snow, and I managed to sleep comfortably bundled up in my sleeping bag.

Dinner in the kitchen:

Home away from home:

The next morning, we took down the tents and headed back over to the hut to simulate some emergency conditions we might encounter in the field. For example, we pretended that one of our friends was lost in a blizzard on the way to the outhouse, and we had to find a way to locate him. We put buckets over our heads to imitate a white out situation, and about eight or nine of us grabbed part of a rope attached to the hut and began walking in the direction of the outhouse. Little did we know that we began to double back, and we ended up heading straight into the wall of the hut! Our friend over by the outhouse must have thought it was funny to see a bunch of people with buckets on their heads holding a rope and stumbling in circles. Afterwards, we talked about our mistakes and how we could learn from them. Then, the bus took us back to McMurdo, and we were home in time for dinner.

Getting Set Up

2009-12-19T12:43:00.002+13:00

I've been spending the past couple of days getting our laboratory set up and our field gear put together and running. Today I've been assembling the gas analyzers that we use in the field to measure CO2 flux (to measure processes like photosynthesis and respiration). I have to make sure I write down every piece we need to run the analyzers, because if I forget to take something to the field, we can't come back for it very easily! It's not a very exciting job to do, but it's very important to be as organized as possible before we leave for the field on Monday. (Luckily I have some fabulous Florida State gear sent by my cousin Simone to use while I do it!)
The green notebook I'm writing in (with a FSU pen) is lovingly called a "green brain" here. People always have their green brain in their pocket and use it to remember, organize, and plan EVERYTHING. I'd be in trouble if I ever lost my brain! It's how I remember what gear I need to pack for each field experiment, how much each piece of equipment weighs for transport in the helicopter, important phone numbers, GPS coordinates for our research plots, permit numbers for shipping samples... EVERYTHING!

Tomorrow is our last day in town before we head out to Lake Fryxell for our first day of field work. We have more organizing and setting up to do, and a lot of packing!

Arrival in Antarctica

2009-12-17T19:46:00.009+13:00

Jenn and I have arrived at McMurdo Station, Antarctica! On Wednesday, we woke up early in Christchurch, packed our bags and were driven to the airport. There, we boarded a U.S. Air Force C-17 and flew from New Zealand to Antarctica. The crew flying the plane were from McChord Air Force Base in Washington, and they were very nice to us, their "cargo". There were about 40 passengers on the plane- mostly scientists. We also flew with a bunch of cargo destined for the South Pole. The weather was great, so our flight was easy and on time. The view from the window was great once we got over the continent. This is a picture from the porthole above my head on the plane. It's part of the continent that is covered by an ice sheet (which is about 98% of the continent). Off on the horizon you can see the ocean with icebergs floating in it.

The mountain range that crosses Antarctica is (cleverly) called the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range. Later in the flight, we were even allowed to go up into the cockpit for an even better view!
Then, after a 5-hour flight, we landed at Pegasus Airfield in Antarctica. This is an "ice runway". That means it's built on a sheet of very thick, permanent ice that covers the Ross Sea. So there's not even any solid ground under that ice holding the airplane up!
Here's Jenn in front of the C-17, right after we landed:We've been in McMurdo for one whole day now. We've spent a lot of time in various training sessions. There's a lot we have to learn about how to live in Antarctica, because it's so environmentally protected and the climate can be so dangerous. We've learned about everything from lab safety to light vehicle driving to how to throw out our garbage!

Over the next couple of days, we'll continue setting up the lab and preparing our supplies for the field. There are a few more trainings we have to do, too. Tomorrow morning Jenn leaves for "snow school", which is where she learns outdoor survival skills. Let's hope for good weather for her. Snow school is much more fun when it's sunny!

Time in New Zealand

2009-12-15T15:34:00.016+13:00

Today we were outfitted with all of the gear we need to wear while in Antarctica. The board in the top picture shows the variety of clothes they give us: everything from long underwear and socks to coats and hats. We have to try on all of the clothes we're issues to make sure everything fits. I practiced my "ninja look" with the polypropylene base layer we're given. We also have to make sure that all of the layers fit overtop one another comfortably. Underneath that big red parka and the windpants, I am wearing 2 pairs of long underwear, fleece pants, a long undershirt, and a fleece jacket. I was very toasty warm!

Our flight to McMurdo will be tomorrow at 9 AM (New Zealand time). That means we have some extra time to spend around Christchurch. My favorite place to go in is the Botanical Garden. It's summer here, so all of the flowers are in bloom. It smells wonderful, and it's so nice to enjoy the sunshine and greenery before heading to Antarctica.
Jenn and I also went to the Canterbury Museum, where we learned a lot about the history of New Zealand and its people. New Zealand was originally colonized about 800-900 years ago by Polynesians. So, the ancestors of native New Zealanders are related to the people of Hawaii and other Polynesian islands in the South Pacific. These early people lived in New Zealand (or Aotearoa, as they called it) by hunting a bird called a moa. These are large, flightless birds that only ever lived in New Zealand, but are now extinct because they were overhunted by the early people! These early moa-hunting people of New Zealand are called the Maori. They have a very unique culture with their own language, art, and traditions. They hunted the moa until they were driven to extinction, at which point they relied more on farming and fishing. They were great craftsman that made beautiful wood carvings and ornaments made from jade and Paua shells. Their lives of course changed a great deal when New Zealand was colonized by Europeans, mainly the British, about 250 years ago. This is very similar to the U.S., where the Native Americans practiced their own culture until it was interrupted by European colonists. But, many aspects of Maori culture still remain in New Zealand. Maori is still one of the official languages of New Zealand, and even New Zealanders of European descent know many phrases in Maori, and you find Maori translations of most information given on signs and notices. Some of their cultural legacies in New Zealand include the haka dance (a war dance with a lot of shouting), and their art is still very much a part of New Zealand culture.

Well, if all goes according to plan, we will leave for McMurdo tomorrow morning and my next blog post will be from Antarctica! All but one piece of our luggage has arrived. Hopefully the final piece will come today so that we land in McMurdo fully-prepared for the next two months!

[Photo credit: Maori wood-carving from Wikimedia]

Arrival in New Zealand

2009-12-13T18:24:00.004+13:00

Well, Jenn and I have made it safely to Christchurch, New Zealand. It has been a long two days and every leg of the trip ran a little bit late. Our bus was a little bit late getting to the Boston airport. We left Boston a little late, so arrived in Los Angeles a little bit late. Luckily there was still enough time to meet our connection to Sydney without any trouble (but no time to stop and eat dinner). Our flight left Los Angeles only about 20 minutes late, but landed in Sydney about 40 minutes late. That caused us to miss our connecting flight to Christchurch, NZ. They arranged for us to get a new flight to Christchurch, NZ on a different airline, but it was still a close connection due to our late arrival. When we arrived in Sydney, we had to be rushed off the plane and driven on one of those big golfcarts by airline employees to our gate. Luckily, we made the new flight on time! Unfortunately, our luggage didn't. So, when we arrived in Christchurch a couple hours later than planned, our luggage wasn't there! And to make it worse, the U.S. Antarctic Program's headquarters were closed by the time we got in! So, all we could do was head empty-handed to our hotel and wait until tomorrow morning.

Now, I am sitting in the lounge of our favorite B&B in Christchurch with a cup of tea and biscuits. Luckily I put a lot of necessities in my carry-on bags, so I have showered and changed my clothes after 48 hours of travel and I feel much better! Hopefully our luggage will arrive on the next flight from Sydney and we'll be able to pick it up tomorrow. Then, we can start enjoying our two days in New Zealand!

Now, it is time for dinner. Keep your fingers crossed that our luggage finds us before we leave for Antarctica on Wednesday!

And We're Off!

2009-12-12T05:23:00.001+13:00

We've begun our journey south! Jenn and I are on the bus to Boston now. The first leg of the trip has begun.

Almost Time to Leave

2009-12-11T06:46:00.003+13:00

We're all packed up to go! Tomorrow morning Jennifer and I start our 5-day journey to Antarctica. First, we fly commercially to Christchurch, New Zealand. We're getting routed from Boston, through Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia to get to New Zealand. It'll take a total of 33 hours from the time we leave Dartmouth until we arrive in Christchurch, but because of the International Date Line, we'll land there 2 days later.

Check out this interactive map if you want to find out more about our travel plans.

We'll be in Christchurch, NZ for 3 days before we finish our trip and fly to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. While in Christchurch, we'll get fitted for all of our Extreme Cold Weather Gear, receive some safety training, and of course enjoy some of that great New Zealand summer weather!

Let's hope the weather is good for our travels and that we don't encounter any major delays! I'll keep you posted.

One More Week!

2009-12-05T08:28:00.002+13:00

We are at the one-week mark! We leave for Antarctica on December 11, exactly one week from today. I'm finishing all of the labwork that needs to be done before I leave and getting the last of our gear packed up. It is a busy time for our group here at Dartmouth!

I'll keep you posted on our travels as we make our way across the globe.

Welcome to Season 3!

2009-11-17T08:17:00.007+13:00

Welcome to another field season of research in Antarctica with the Dartmouth polar soils research group!

We are making preparations to leave the U.S. and head to McMurdo Station on December 12. It is a busy time of preparations for us at Dartmouth! We have a lot of work to finish up, travel plans to arrange, and supplies and equipment to gather. In just a few weeks, we'll be on our way.

If you are new to the Polar Soils blog, here is some information that might be useful to you:

Where we go:
When most people think of Antarctica, they think of ice. When you're on the continent of Antarctica, it's referred to as being on the "ice." However, the area we study is a polar desert called the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where the glaciers have retreated. Just like deserts in the U.S., there's very little precipitation, so there's actually bare soil, not just ice and snow! The red dot on the map shows where McMurdo is located:

What we do:
Our research is in the field of soil biogeochemistry, which is just a big word that means we study the way nutrient elements move in the soil. We are especially interested in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, since these three elements are so important for all forms of life. We study how the living organisms influence nutrients in the soil. All of the animals in the dry valleys are microscopic (except for the scientists, of course). While other areas of Antarctica have penguins and seals, the dry valleys' largest animal is a nematode. A predatory nematode is the top of our foodchain- the equivalent to a lion in the Serengeti! We also study the mosses growing in the dry valley soil. Mosses are the only plants growing in the dry valleys and the only living things you'll find above the soil- the equivalent to the redwood forests in America!

Who we are:
Our research team is a little bit different from last year. There are four soil scientists going to Antarctica from Dartmouth. The leader is Dr. Ross Virginia, a professor at Dartmouth who has been going to Antarctica for many years. Also on the team are me (Becky, a postdoc), Julia and Jen (both graduate students). While on the ice, we will continue to work very closely with another group of scientists from Colorado State University led by Dr. Diana Wall that specializes in the nematodes (they have a special nematode blog). Together all of us study the nutrients and biology of the McMurdo Dry Valley soils.

About the blog:
Our blog is designed to be an educational tool for elementary and middle school classrooms, but all readers are welcome to follow along! Teachers interested in using the blog in their classes are welcome to contact me (contact information available through my website, listed under my Profile on the bottom-right).
On the right-hand side, there are some links with additional information that is useful for both kids and adults. Many links are added throughout the season, so keep an eye on them!

Continuing the work back at Dartmouth

2009-03-15T07:44:00.007+13:00

We've been back at Dartmouth for about a month, now. Our soil and moss samples have been shipped from Antarctica so that we can continue to analyze them. We store the samples at Dartmouth in big freezers at -20°C (cold enough to keep their chemical properties from changing, so that they remain the same as when we scooped them up from the Dry Valleys).

We spend a lot of time in the lab performing our analyses. Here, I am weighing some soils into a tin to measure their moisture content. We will also measure the amount of nutrients, ions, microbial biomass, and many other chemical properties of the soils. We will then have to process the data and see what we learned from the field season. There will be graphs to make, papers to write, and new experiments to design from what we learn. It will take a lot of time, and will keep us quite busy until next December when it's time to head back down again!

I've also been to visit my friends at Thetford Elementary School, who followed my blog while I was in Antarctica. I was able to join their class for a morning to talk about Antarctic science, show photos and rock samples, and eat delicious home-made snacks. It was a great home-coming!

We're Done!

2009-02-01T19:22:00.002+13:00

Well, the field season is officially over! We have closed up the lab. We have shipped all of our samples. We've packed up our belongings. There's no more work to be done! Tomorrow we will fly back to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Tonight, we have to pack up our luggage and turn it over to the crew that will load the C-17. This is lovingly called "bag drag", because it involves dragging our orange bags up the hill to the transport building. There, everything is weighed (including us!), and our luggage is put on pallets to load onto the aircraft when it arrives. Tomorrow we will go back to the building with our carry-on luggage to be transported to the ice runway where we'll meet the C-17. It's a day full of waiting!

The last piece of business I had here at McMurdo was to show my new Wubble friend around town. The Wubble is visiting from Thetford Elementary School in Vermont. He learned a lot about Antarctica while he was here. I also learned a few things about Wubbles. I learned that Wubbles do not like wind! He had a hard time standing up for the photo... :)

Ok, it's time for bag drag! Keep your fingers crossed that weather and mechanics cooperate, and I make it back to Christchurch in good time!

How to Walk in the Dry Valleys

2009-01-31T16:51:00.000+13:00

The dry valleys are a very sensitive ecosystem. Because it's such a harsh place for organisms to live, they do not grow very fast. We don't want to make it any harder for them! Plus, we want the ecosystem to stay as clean and healthy as possible, without creating too much of a disturbance ourselves. We want to avoid damaging the ecosystem and the organisms as much as possible. Therefore have to be very careful when we work in the dry valleys.

The main way we can disturb the environment is by walking. We have to walk a lot to get to our camp and field sites for work. There are very specific ways we walk here to minimize the amount of disturbance we create with our feet.

When we're walking on the ground to and from our field sites, we always walk single-file so that only one line of footprints is made. We follow paths made by the polygon cracks in the ground. These cracks are made by the repeated freezing and thawing of the ground, and they form a variety of interesting shapes, called polygons. When you look at the ground from a helicopter, you see all of the polygons that make up the dry valley landscape.

Our previous research has shown us that soil biodiversity is lowest in these cracks. There are fewer animals living in the soil at the cracks than in the flat part of the ground. So, we try to always walk in the cracks. That way, our footsteps are trampling the least amount of organisms as possible. It unfortunately means that we can't walk in a straight line anywhere! You have to follow the zig-zagging of the polygon cracks to get from one place to another, which means sometimes you walk twice as much as the distance you need to go! Here's what it looks like as you walk in the polygon cracks:

When we're working at our field sites, we try our best to not trample the soil too much. We stand on rocks as much as possible. If we want to sit down, we sit on rocks, like Katie is doing:

Sometimes we work near streams, especially for our moss research. We don't want to disturb the algae and moss growing in the sediment in the streams. To avoid trampling anything, we rock hop. Every step we take has to be on a rock, where algae are not growing. This is pretty easy when the stream flow is low and the rocks are exposed, but it can get tricky if the water is high!

Sometimes we even have to rock hop to walk across the dry ground. The polygon cracks cover most of the soil, but they're not everywhere. When there are no cracks, we rockhop across the ground so that we don't disturb the soil!

Most of the places we walk are on soil and near streams. But, sometimes we walk on the ice. We don't have to be as careful about the ecosystem when we're on the ice, because there's not much damage we can do. But, we still have to be careful! The ice is slippery, of course, so we wear stabilizers attached to our shoes that give us better traction. Also, the glaciers and lake ice are covered with cryoconite holes. These holes are formed when dirt or rocks are blown onto the ice. Because the rocks are dark, they absorb more of the sun's heat and melt the ice around them. The rocks sink down as the ice melts, leaving a lot of little holes in the ice. These holes might be several inches deep, or even deeper! They can be just a couple inches wide, or they can be much bigger! It depends on the size of the rock that landed there to melt the ice. Sometimes the holes are filled with water. We have to be careful not to step in them, because if you do, you'll suddenly find yourself standing in a deep, wet hole! Sometimes the cryoconite holes have been covered back over with a layer of ice on top that maes the holes hard to see. But, that layer of ice is not strong enough to hold a person, so you crash through unexpectedly. You have to keep an eye on the ground so that you know you're stepping on thick ice. This is what it looks like to walk over the top of a glacier in the dry valleys. This is from our Christmas Eve hike over the Canada Glacier:

We do a lot of walking while we're here. Now you know what it's like!

Camp Hair Contest Winner

2009-01-31T11:14:00.004+13:00

The week has passed, and the votes have been tallied. The winner of the 2008-09 Best Camp Hair Contest is...

BREANA!!

This proud wormherder celebrates her victory by sporting her favorite facial hair accessory- a mustache! It's a very expensive mustache to have grown.Congratulations Breana!

Old Antarctic Explorers

2009-01-26T09:00:00.000+13:00

Antarctica has a long history of exploration. Explorers, mainly from Europe, were frequently coming to Antarctica during the late 1800's and early 1900's during what is called the "Heroic Age of Exploration". The goals of the explorations were mainly scientific. They wanted to study the geography of Antarctica and reach the South Pole. This was a very difficult time to be an Old Antarctic Explorer. Resources were scarce down here, working conditions were strenuous, and of course the weather was harsh! Explorations tended to be a feat of endurance, both physically and mentally. A lot of people died during expeditions to explore Antarctica and reach the South Pole.

One particular OAE that is important in the McMurdo area is Robert F. Scott. He led several missions to this area of Antarctica. After exploring a lot of this region, Scott led a party in an attempt to reach the South Pole. He was racing the Norwegian explorer, Amundsen, to be the first to reach the South Pole. Unfortunately, the trip did not go well for Scott. They did reach the South Pole, but they were beaten there by Amundsen's party. And, on the journey back to the coast (here at McMurdo), everyone in Scott's party died due to the harsh conditions. Surprisingly, they were only 11 miles away from a supply hut when they died. It is a very unfortunate story!
A statue of Scott is in Christchurch, NZ. We always visit it on our way down to the ice. Here's Katie with the statue, back in December when we were passing through.

A lot still remains of the early explorations. Near McMurdo, there is a hut that was built in 1902 by Scott during his first mission, called the Discovery Mission. The hut is called (cleverly) Discovery Hut, and sits on Hut Point just outside of McMurdo. Several huts like this were built around Antarctica to be supply stations for explorers along various points on their journey. It is Discovery Hut that Scott's South Pole party was trying to reach when they died.Because Antarctica is so cold and dry, these huts are very well preserved. The food and equipment that explorers used are still in the huts. We were lucky enough this year to be able to go inside Discovery Hut and see what's in there! Here's a video I took walking through the hut. You can hear Breana telling some facts about the hut and Katie asking questions. It's neat to see all of the old supplies, like what kind of food they eat and clothes they wore!

Some of the facts Breana is reading:
These huts were built in Australia, fashioned after Aboriginal huts that were designed to keep cool during the hot summers. Scott thought that it would work the same for keeping warm in cold Antarctica. But, he was wrong! The building was not warm enough for people to live in, so it was used for storage and cooking. Instead, the people lived on the boat just offshore. They heated the building with a blubber stove. That's the brick structure in the floor towards the end of the video. You can sort of see the huge chunk of freeze-dried whale blubber behind Uffe at the beginning of the tour (it's in a shadow, so hard to notice).

It was pretty neat to be able to see this little piece of Antarctic history. It's amazing to think about the conditions that the early explorers had to deal with. They're the same type of conditions we deal with here, but we're much better equipped now!

Winding Down

2009-01-25T17:08:00.002+13:00

Our field season at McMurdo is starting to wind down. Ross is leaving today to head back to the U.S. Katie, Elizabeth and I are here just one more week to finish up our work. We are scheduled to head back to New Zealand on February 2.

We have just two more days of field work left for this coming week. Other than that, we are processing the last of our samples and breaking down the lab. We are cleaning out the lab, returning field gear, and gathering up our shipments to send home. All of the soil and moss samples we've collected over the season are getting boxed up to ship back to Dartmouth. We will have a lot more work to do with them once we return home.

It will be a busy week!

The Dry Valley Forest

2009-01-22T20:31:00.013+13:00

As I've said before, Antarctica is a very hard place to live. It's not just hard for animals, but also for plants. It's very dry, so plants cannot get much water to grow. The only time water is plentiful is during the 14 weeks of the year when the meltwater streams are flowing, and that water is only available if you're right next to the stream. Sunlight is also a problem. During the winter there's no sunlight for photosynthesis, but during the summer the sun can be so intense that it can actually damage plants. So, it takes a very hardy plant to be able to grow here!

The only plants we have in the dry valleys are mosses. Very short mosses. There are no vascular plants, which are what most people think of when they hear the word "plant". Mosses mainly grow in patches along streams or beneath snow patches, which is only a small percent of the land area. They grow incredibly slowly. We're talking less than a millimeter of growth per year! Most of the moss we see look like the photo above from right outside the Lake Fryxell camp hut. They're not lush and green, because they're usually too cold, too dry, or have too much sun damage. But, sometimes you find a nice, lush green patch like the one below! This patch was probably recently uncovered from water, so is still very happy.

One of the really cool things about this patch of moss that Elizabeth, Katie, and Ross found is that it has reproductive structures. Moss is able to reproduce in two ways. It can reproduce by itself, where bits of the moss break off and become a new moss plant. In the dry valleys, these small bits of moss might blow in the wind to a new location, so that moss spread to new areas. Moss can also reproduce with each other. For this, the moss grow special structures. These special structures act like male and female parts, so that the sperm from the male structures fertilizes the female structures, forming spores (which are sort of like seeds in plants). When they're ready, the spores are released from the female structures to seed new areas. (Click here to see a video of moss reproduction.)

It is generally thought that moss in the dry valleys spread by pieces breaking off and becoming new mosses, not by developing spores. Growing the special reproductive structures requires a lot of energy and resources that are very hard to come by in the dry valleys. But, in this happy patch of moss, we see reproductive structures! Those white-ish stems coming up are the structures that contain the spores. Here's what one looks like under the microscope:

Moss is the only above-ground life in the dry valleys. All of the other organisms live in the soil, not on it. So, moss are in a way like the redwood forests of the Antarctic Dry Valleys! They are one of the few sources of food for soil organisms. When mosses die, they decompose in the soil, just like plants in warmer climates. The carbon and nutrients released from mosses when they decompose are probably a very important part of the soil food web. That is why so much of our research this year focuses on mosses. We want to know more about their role in the carbon and nutrient cycles in the dry valleys. We measure their photosynthesis rates, so that we know how much carbon they are taking from the air and putting into the soil. We measure their nutrients, so we know what type of food they are providing to the soil organisms. We measure how they respond to changes in moisture and nutrients in the soil, so that we know how stable their role is in nutrient cycles.To see how the nutrients in moss respond to changing the nutrients around them, we spray salt solutions that contain nitrogen or phosphorus onto the mosses (very similar to the stoichiometry experiment using the "hula" cones). Here's a patch of mosses next to one of the streams. It's buried in silt a bit, but there are mosses down there! Katie is spraying the nutrient solutions on them. While we were at F6 this week, we took samples from the plot to see if adding nutrients around the mosses changed the nutrient content of the mosses themselves. We also have these plots set up around a few other streams that we will have to sample in the next week.

2nd Annual Camp Hair Contest

2009-01-20T17:20:00.001+13:00

It is time for the Second Annual McMurdo Field Camp Hair Contest!

The water restrictions in the dry valleys means that we are not able to shower or wash our hair while we're out at field camps. That means that people's hair gets very dirty and oily, which of course leads to some very fabulous hair-do's! This is what we call having "camp hair." Having great camp hair is a matter of pride, and the person with the best camp hair is honored throughout McMurdo. So, once again, I'm going to leave it up to everyone reading my blog to decide who has the best camp hair for the 2008-09 field season. Review the photos below of our "camp hair" contestants, and send in your vote! Anyone reading this is welcome to vote, and can do so by sending an email with your choice to me.

Let's meet this year's contestants!

Elizabeth:Returning champion Elizabeth is once again demonstrating her all-natural, gravity-defying camp hairdo. While the front of her hair has been flattened by hours of lying under a hat, don't let that fool you! The back of her head is 4 inches taller than the rest of her! Photo taken after 5 days in the field.

Katie:Recent Dartmouth graduate Katie is featuring the Cindy Loo Who look. The dry air can't keep her hair down, oh no. This springy look comes after 5 days in the field under the influence of wind, sunblock, and home-made wool hats.

Corey:
With only 3 camp-showers over the course of his 40-day field stint, stream-team member Corey's hair has been dirtied, wind-blown and pelted by sand particles. Much like this ventifact. Coupling his hairdo with a savage beard, Corey presents a look that is hard for our other gals to match.

Breana:This wormherder postdoc's look just screams "Troll Doll". Breana does not need multiple days without a shower to master this fine look. On Day 1 in the field, this is her hair's reaction to a mere few hours of being trapped under a hat. When her hair is released from under her hat, watch out!

There they are: the 2008-09 season's Best Camp Hair contestants. May the voting begin! The champion Camp Hair will be declared a week from today.

2009-01-20T17:11:00.002+13:00

After a full day of weather delays on Saturday (and our wonderful luau), we finally made it back out to F6 on Lake Fryxell. However, the bad weather took out our internet! We finally had IT guys come in today to fix it, so we've been reconnected with the outside world.

We've been busy with lots of field work for the past several days. But, it's been very cold! I'll catch you up on all of our work since we lost connection over the next few days. Right now, it's time for a hot drink and some dinner!

More Weather Delays

2009-01-17T09:56:00.005+13:00

The weather has been very uncooperative for the past week and a half! It was hard getting everyone back into town after our field work last week, because the weather was bad and the helo's couldn't fly. Katie, Elizabeth, and Ross got stuck out at Lake Fryxell camp for an extra day because no helo could get into the Valley to pick them up. I kept trying to leave McMurdo to go to Lake Bonney, but that trip kept getting canceled. We finally made it to our destinations, after a couple days of delay. We all made it back to McMurdo on Tuesday, after completing most of the work we needed to do last week. Since then, we've all been back in McMurdo processing samples in the lab. Today, we are once again trying to get back to the field. We were all supposed to fly out this morning to F6 camp on Lake Fryxell. But, it's snowing again, and you can only see about 200 m across McMurdo Sound, so we're not going anywhere!

Since we're all stuck here in town, we decided to have a luau on the Florida Keys (after my walk to the post office to pick up some super fun packages that were sent to me). We decorated ourselves using my Luau in an Envelope kit. And we basked on the edge of the miniature beach that was sent to me from Florida (which I'm holding in my hands). Here we are partying in the hallway in the science building: Karen, Katie, Diana, Breana, Uffe, me, and Bishwo. Of course, we also decorate any passers-by, so now there's a lot of people in the science building in Antarctica that are dressed for a luau!There's still a small chance we could get out to F6 later today. But the weather is not looking so good, which means we may be stuck in town until Monday. I'll keep you posted!

Nitrogen Fixation

2009-01-15T17:42:00.014+13:00

Nitrogen is the most common element in the atmosphere and the air we breathe (78%), and it is a necessary element for life. It is an important element in proteins and enzymes, including the enzyme that allows plants to photosynthesize. However, the form of nitrogen that is in the air is not usable by plants. Plants use nitrogen compounds in the soil, not the nitrogen gas that is so abundant in the air. So how does all of that nitrogen from the air get into the soil for plants to use?

There are some organisms called cyanobacteria that can use the nitrogen gas in the air. They have special cells (called heterocysts) that can can grab nitrogen gas from the air and change it into a usable compound. This is a process called "nitrogen fixation". The cyanobacteria use that new form of nitrogen to grow. Then, when the cyanobacteria dies and decays, that usable form of nitrogen is released in the soil for plants and animals to use.

We see a lot of cyanobacteria near the streams and lakes in the dry valleys. It will grow in thick mats, like you see here. All of that black stuff is a bunch of cyanobacteria matted together, making a layer on top of the soil. One of the things we want to know is how much nitrogen the cyanobacteria are fixing. That way we can estimate how much nitrogen they are adding to the soil for the mosses and other soil animals to use. Unfortunately, it is not very easy to measure nitrogen fixation. But, we can measure a similar chemical process called "acetylene reduction" that helps us calculate how much nitrogen is being taken from the air. To measure acetylene reduction, we place small amounts of cyanobacteria (and mosses with cyanobacteria growing on it) into air-tight chambers, like the clear plastic ones in this picture. We then add a gas called acetylene to the chamber. The cyanobacteria will change the acetylene to ethylene in a process similar to how they change nitrogen gas. We leave the pieces of cyanobacteria and moss in the chambers for 1-5 hours. Then, we take a sample of the air inside the chamber and put it in a special vial. We then measure the amount of acetylene that has been changed to ethylene, and we can then calculate how much nitrogen would have been fixed from the air.

Here's Elizabeth and Ross measuring acetylene reduction at one of our field sites. Elizabeth is using a big syringe to pull new acetylene from a bag to inject into the plastic chambers. Ross is using another syringe to remove a gas sample from a chamber that contains some cyanobacteria.
We will take the vials of gas samples back to Dartmouth and measure the concentration of ethylene on one of the machines in our lab at home. So, we're doing the work now, but won't see the results for another month!

Dry Valley Wildlife

2009-01-12T09:28:00.016+13:00

Most people think of Antarctica as being a big, cold, dead place. When you see photos of our research in the dry valleys, you don't see animals. But, there are animals there, in every single one of those pictures! You just can't see them, because they're microscopic. Here's some information about the main types of micro-organisms that live in Antarctic soils.

Nematodes
Also called roundworms, nematodes live EVERYWHERE in the world. You can find them in every biome in the world. They live in water, soil, ice, even in other animals! They are the most abundant animal in the world. In the dry valleys, we find more nematodes than any other animal. They are what our collaborators at Colorado State focus on studying. We have three main species that live here. The most numerous species, Scottnema lindsayae, is in the photo to the left.

Nematodes eat a lot of different things. Some, like the guy at the left, eat bacteria. Others eat fungi or algae, and some are even predators that eat other microscopic soil organisms. In the dry valleys, a predatory nematode is the top of the food chain! Though nematodes are small, they have a lot of very well-defined characteristics. Here is a very close-up picture of the mouth-parts of a bacterial-feeding nematode. They use those long branches on their mouths to scrape bacteria off of soil surfaces.

Rotifers
Rotifers also live in a lot of different environments, including fresh water, saltwater, soils, and other watery environments. A rotifer eats by waving the hairs around its mouth (at the top, in this picture) to catch things floating in the water. The moving action around their mouth looks kind of like a wheel, which is how they got the name ROTifer (like rotate). The "foot" (at the bottom of the picture) is to anchor the rotifer when it doesn't want to move.

Tardigrades
Tardigrades are also called water bears, and looking at the picture I think you can see why! They even have claws at the end of their feet, which you can see in this very close-up microscrope picture that Uffe took of a tardigrade foot. The claws let them hold on to something as they float through water or the water-filled spaces in the soil. Tardigrades eat with a stylet that they use to pierce animal and plant cell walls.

Tardigrades are able to live in a lot of extreme environments, and are found everwhere from the Himalayas to the ocean floor to Antarctica. They can withstand the pressure of a vaccuum, radiation, dehydration, and both incredibly high and low temperatures. There are even experiments that test tardigrades' ability to live in open space! In the dry valleys, they especially like to live in the moss and algae patches, where food and water are readily available.

The soil environment in the dry valleys is a very hard place to be an animal. There's not a lot of water, not a lot to eat, and it is very cold! Most of these micro-organisms have a special ability to help survive in such a harsh environment. They can go into anhydrobiosis, which essentially means they can freeze-dry themselves. They can push out all of their water and curl up, so that they don't freeze and die. Their metabolism drops to almost a stand-still! They can stay in anhydrobiosis for a very long time, and immediately wake up if water becomes available.

Part of our research looks at what animals are living in the soil. We want to know why they live in some places in the dry valleys, but not others. We want to know how nutrient cycles in the soil change when animals are there or not. So, we spend a lot of time on the microscopes looking at the animals we can extract from the soil. One of our team members, Byron, made this awesome video through the 'scope featuring three of our soil superstars: nematodes, rotifers, and tardigrades.

[Photos of each are from the linked websites: S. lindsayae, rotifer, tardigrade. Video by Byron Adams. Tardigrade foot photo taken by Uffe Nielsen.]

Tracer Experiment

2009-01-09T21:02:00.005+13:00

Well, we finally made it out to the field. The weather at McMurdo has been very patchy. There's been snow and a lot of clouds. But, the weather out in the Dry Valleys has been very nice. So, once they finally had a short window of time to get us out, we left McMurdo and have been staying in the Valleys ever since in some beautiful, sunny weather. Katie and Elizabeth made it out to Lake Fryxell on Wednesday afternoon. Ross and I made it out to Lake Bonney on Thursday afternoon.

At Lake Bonney, Ross and I were working on an experiment that traced the movement of water from melting permafrost flowing over the soil. Permafrost is soil and rock in the ground that stays permanently frozen year-round. It usually is found below the soil surface in cold places like Antarctica and the Arctic. During the summer in the dry valleys, the permafrost will melt a little bit, causing wet patches to appear in the soil. You can see those darker, wet patches of soil in this picture at Bonney:Because it's been so warm this year, the permafrost below the soil has been melting a lot more than usual. At one of our research sites at Bonney, that meltwater has reach the surface (kind of like a spring you might find in the mountains in the US). There's so much meltwater that it ended up forming a stream that flows all the way down to the lake, straight through some long-term sampling plots we set up years ago! (Our team nickname in McMurdo is the Wormherders. Because the stream flows through one of our plots, it is called Wormherder Creek.) Instead of being upset that our plots are ruined, we're using the opportunity to learn about sources of water in the dry valleys and how they influence the soil.

On Thursday, we soil ecologists teamed up with a group of stream ecologists to study how the new Wormherder Creek interacts with the soil to influence soil chemistry and organisms. We added chemicals containing lithium and bromide high up on Wormherder Creek, and we followed how those chemicals moved down the stream and through the soil. There were two people at the top of the creek at the chemical injection site running the pump. Then, there were scientists stationed at regular intervals down the stream collecting samples every 5 or 10 minutes. I was stationed higher up on the creek with Uffe. In this video, you see Uffe labeling the bottle to take the next sample. That bottle gets dipped into the stream flow to be filled with water. You can see another scientist, Anna, further down the stream at the next station. You can also see how fast that meltwater is moving! It's a small creek, but there's a good bit of water in it! The tube next to the orange flag is called a piezometer, which is how we extract ground water from below the surface.

We collected a lot of surface water, ground water, and soil samples for several hours through the night. We will look for the presence and concentration of the chemicals we released high up in the stream so that we can follow how the water moved down to the lake. We will also measure the chemistry of the water and soil, and look at what kinds of organisms we find in various locations, to see how those important properties are influenced by the presence of Wormherder Creek. It was a loooong night, but we finished it!

After we left Lake Bonney late Thursday night, Ross headed to Fryxell to be with Katie and Elizabeth. I have been back at F6 (across the lake from the rest of the group) working on the stoichiometry plots that we treated last week. Hopefully I will be heading back to Lake Bonney tomorrow, but the weather does not look good in McMurdo, so the helicopters may not be able to come get me! Keep your fingers crossed, because I have samples to get back to the lab!

My bags are packed, I'm ready to go....

2009-01-07T08:16:00.010+13:00

Because the Dry Valleys are so remote, we fly on helicopters to get there. Today we were supposed to fly to Lake Fryxell and Lake Bonney. But the weather is very bad for flying right now so we can't go anywhere. Helicopters only fly when the sky is clear and the wind is not blowing too hard. The helicopters here at McMurdo have lots of jobs to do, such as taking people to different places, delivering packages to field camps, and moving large pieces of equipment. Even though the helicopters have many jobs to do, safety is more important than everything else. So if the weather is bad enough, they all stay on the ground. Usually from the helicopter pad you can look out at the Ross Sea and also see the mainland on the other side. As this picture shows, you can't see much of anything this morning.

Last night we got a few inches of snow in McMurdo, even though it's the middle of summer!

We come down to Antarctic with plans to do lots and lots of scientific research, the weather is unpredictable. Sometimes we simply can't get out to our field locations and must wait for the weather to clear. So that's what we're doing today... waiting for better weather!

In and Back Out Again

2009-01-06T14:46:00.005+13:00

Our final team member, Ross, arrived Saturday night. So, we are now a complete group of 4 from Dartmouth! Together, we've spent the past couple of days in McMurdo in our lab processing our samples.

Katie is working on a procedure called Chloroform Fumigation Extraction. For that, she is measuring the amount of carbon in the soil that is released after adding chloroform. Chloroform is a chemical that breaks open cells of living organisms (including people). So, if the carbon is released by the chloroform, it was released by the microbes living in the soil. Measuring the amount of carbon released by chloroform gives us an estimate of the microbial biomass living in the soil we are studying. Of course, Katie has to be careful not to breathe the chloroform herself. (Don't worry: when this picture was taken, she was already finished with the chloroform step!)
Elizabeth is busy picking all of the rocks out of her soil samples. The soils she is studying are very rocky, and the pebbles have to be removed before she can measure their chemistry. Doesn't that look like fun?!

We will be heading out to the field again tomorrow. We will be splitting up into two groups so that we can get more work done. Katie and Elizabeth will be going back to Lake Fryxell where we went the first week of our field work. Ross and I will be moving around all over the valley for the rest of the week. We'll be busy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~On another note~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Check out the awesome card I got in the mail yesterday, drawn by my friend Bob! Cedar waxwings like these live in the trees outside my office back at Dartmouth, so I put the card over my desk here in McMurdo to remind me of home.

Now where was that?

2009-01-04T19:14:00.007+13:00

The plants and animals that live in the Dry Valleys are very small. Because they are so small, they are often difficult to locate, and even more difficult to find a second time.

This picture shows how closely you have to look to find the mosses that we study.

There are also no road signs pointing us in the direction of our research sites. We study certain spots in the field during one research season and try to get back to those same locations the next year. This is challenging because there are very few land features that we can use to remember a certain location and some things change from year to year. The streams are fed by melted snow, so they change depending upon how much snow falls during the winter and melts in the summer. This stream might have looked completely different last year, so finding a particular bend in the stream is nearly impossible.

Because of these navigational challenges, we use a GPS to help us find places in the Dry Valleys.
GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It uses satellites orbiting the earth that transmit signals, which enable GPS receivers to determine their current location. A GPS tells you your location in latitude and longitude coordinates. When we want to be able to find a certain spot again, we record the latitude and longitude coordinates so that we can later return to that exact location using the GPS.

Here's a picture of Elizabeth using a GPS to record the coordinates of a study site. If she wants to come back later, all she has to do is tell the GPS to find those coordinates and it will point an arrow in the direction we need to walk to get there. It also tells you distance.

A GPS isn't perfect. Sometimes we have a really hard time finding a spot using the coordinates a GPS gives us. It is often about 10 meters off, which is a lot when your study subject is only 1 centimeter tall. But the GPS is a very useful tool and we are very happy that it's in our scientific toolbox!

Stoichiometry

2009-01-02T17:01:00.005+13:00

This morning, Katie and I flew to the Lake Bonney basin for another two days of field work.
While we are here, we will be working on a project that will tell us how the soil and soil organisms respond to nutrients added to the soil.

There are three main elements that are very important for life everywhere: carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These nutrients are important for all organisms to grow and live. If one of these elements is in short supply, organisms cannot continue to grow. So, the amount of nutrients in the soil can be limiting to life. We want to know which of these elements are limiting to life in the dry valleys.

We have set up areas where we add carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus to the soil. Each year, we add more of the nutrients and measure how the microbes and invertebrates living in the soil respond to the additions. We add the nutrients by dissolving sugar and salt in water, then pouring the water over the plots. Some plots get sugar water (for carbon), some get water with nitrogen or phosphorus salt added, and some get both sugar and salt. In this photo, Breana is adding some nutrient water to one of the plots.

We use the plastic cone to prevent the wind from blowing the water away before it reaches the ground. Or, you can be like Uffe and wear the cones as a hula skirt:
After we add the nutrients, we measure respiration to see how active the microbes are. We also measure the amount of nematodes in the soil and how the soil chemistry changes after the nutrients are added.

We've been working on this project for many years. So far, we have learned that carbon is most limiting to life in the dry valleys. Carbon in the soil mostly comes from photosynthesis by plants. Plants are able to take carbon from the air (as carbon dioxide) and turn it into forms usable by soil organisms. Because Antarctica is so cold and dry, there are not a lot of plants. We only have some mosses and algae that can photosynthesize, and they are only found near sources of water. Because there's not a lot of photosynthesis, there is not a lot of carbon added naturally to the soil. So, carbon is often the limiting nutrient in the dry valley soils, which is why we notice the biggest response in the activity of the organisms when we add carbon.

Nitrogen and phosphorus may also become limiting in the soil, if there is enough carbon for organisms to use. That is why we look at all three of the nutrients. We want to know how increases in all three nutrients might influence soil organisms. Which nutrient is most limiting might not be the same everywhere in the dry valleys, since the different areas have different geology. Hopefully this project will be able to tell us which nutrients are limiting in the different areas.

Katie and I are only at Bonney through tomorrow, then it's back to McMurdo to process our soil samples that we collect here. Hopefully, the final member of our team will arrive tomorrow. Ross's flight should be arriving tomorrow afternoon as we're returning from the field. Let's all hope that the good weather continues!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T15:45:00.011+13:00

It is 2009 down here at McMurdo!

We returned from the field on New Year's Eve. We quickly unpacked and took care of all of our samples for the evening. Then, we were ready to celebrate the holiday!

The new year starts for us 18 hours earlier than the east coast of the U.S., so we celebrated New Years Day before most of the U.S. woke up to New Years Eve. Here's Breana (one of the postdocs working with us down here from Colorado State) demonstrating how to celebrate New Years, McMurdo style:

A New Year's tradition at McMurdo is a concert called Icestock. Different groups of people working here (that also happen to be musicians) form bands (to varying levels of success) . Most have only been playing together for a few weeks or months. A big stage is set up outside where each of the bands plays short sets for the crowd of dancing Antarcticans on New Years Eve. So that you can fully experience Icestock, here's a short clip of my favorite Icestock band called Sunday Britches:

To help us ring in the New Year, some people made really cool, big puppets out of random things you can find around McMurdo. They were built on backpack frames and paraded through the crowd of people listening to the live music. They were really creative!

That's how we celebrated the coming of 2009 down here in McMurdo. Today, we are back in the lab processing our soil samples from the field and getting ready to head back out tomorrow morning!

Food, Food, We Love Food!

2008-12-29T19:08:00.005+13:00

A very important part of doing research out in the field is staying well fed. All of the food we bring out with us to the Dry Valleys comes in a box, bag, or can. Because we don't always have a refrigerator, we don't really eat fresh foods. We make milk and juice from powder and even use dehydrated eggs. Here's the kitchen cupboards at one of the field camps in the Dry Valleys.
Every science group that comes out to the field camps brings their own food, but it often doesn't all get used. Lots of food gets left in the camp kitchen for other people to use. Some of it never really gets used and sits on the shelves for years and years. I really enjoy browsing the shelves in the kitchen looking for the oldest expiration date on food packages. Granola bars and beef jerky are generally the oldest. Today I found a Cliff bar at F6 camp that expired in 2003. I performed my own scientific experiment to see if Cliff bars change in quality over time. I banged it on the counter and the bar is a little hard. I couldn't bite through it and it tasted like cardboard. I've heard that the oldest beef jerky found and consumed expired in 1996 and that was found only last year.

Elizabeth, Becky, and I take turns making dinner in field camp. Here's a picture of Becky trying to decide between a box of Thai or a box of Mexican.

There is no running water in the field camps, so we try to use very few dishes when we eat. We often don't wash our bowls between breakfast and dinner, and only wipe them out to save water. So sometimes your dinner tastes a little bit like your breakfast. Yum, yum!
We spend large parts of the day out in the field, so we usually eat lunch away from camps. Remember those Cliff bars and beef jerky I was talking about? Those are our lunch! Here's a picture of Becky snacking on some of the food we bring out with us for long hikes.

Even though we don't have the best ingredients to create fancy meals, we eat pretty well out here and thinking of tasty dishes with what you can find on the camp shelves is always lots of fun. Happy Eating!

Process, Process, Process!

2008-12-28T13:36:00.003+13:00

We flew back to McMurdo Station from Lake Fryxell two days ago. That ended our first week of field work.

During the past two days in town, we've been busy working in the lab. We have to process the samples that we brought back from the field. We have spent most of our time sieving soils to remove the rocks, then weighing out portions of the soil to measure the amount of salts and nutrients in them. We weigh the soils in this special bench that blows air, which prevents anything floating in the air (like dust) from falling into the bags of soil. We wear gloves so that the oils on our skin don't change the chemistry of the soil. We have only 2 days in town at McMurdo to get as much done as possible before we leave again for the field, so it has been very busy!

We are also getting ourselves ready to go back into the field on Monday. We will be going back to Lake Fryxell, but this time we will be staying on the other side of the lake at the camp called "F6". So my next post will probably be from the field!

Christmas in Antarctica

2008-12-25T18:31:00.012+13:00

To celebrate Christmas, we went to another camp nearby on Lake Hoare to be with several other science groups working in Taylor Valley. Christmas with a group is of course more fun than by ourselves, so we hiked over to Lake Hoare on Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with our science family.

To get to Lake Hoare, we had to walk from Lake Fryxell, head up the valleyside a ways, cross over the top of a glacier, then down the other side of the mountain to Lake Hoare camp. It took about 3 hours. Here we are, about half-way through the hike, at the edge of the Canada Glacier where it meets the Lake Fryxell Basin:

There were about ten other people at Lake Hoare camp when we got there. There were limnologists (who study the lakes), glaciologists (who study glaciers), the stream-team (who study the streams), and the two camp managers. They were busy decorating the hut and baking Christmas cookies when we arrived from our hike in the afternoon. It was very warm, friendly, and smelled delicious!

At Lake Hoare, the Christmas traditions always happen on Christmas Eve. We decorate the hut, make and decorate Christmas cookies, and build a very elaborate gingerbread house. The gingerbread house is serious business. It involves heavy construction work, but the finished product is great!

After the decorating is done, we sit down to a great meal prepared by the two camp managers. We had ham, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, homemade dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It was the best meal I've had since I've been here! There was even bread pudding for dessert. Christmas dinner is a fancy-dress occasion. Everyone picks a wig and fancy outfit from the costume box to wear for the evening. To top off the mood, we close all of the shutters so that it's dark inside, and eat by candle and Christmas tree light! Here we are. I'm the one on the right with the silver tinsel hair, Elizabeth is behind me wearing a green feather boa, and Katie is at the end on the left with the tiara.

After dinner, we played the White Elephant present game. We gather around the tree and try to steal the best presents from each other. The present game was followed by an all-night dance party. That way we could work off all the calories we gained from the Christmas cookies and dinner. That is how we rang in Christmas morning- dancing in the hut!

On Christmas morning, we all slept in, then gradually woke up, ate leftovers for breakfast, then said our goodbyes to our "family" at Hoare. We walked our way back to Lake Fryxell, happy and full. It was a beautiful, sunny day that was great for our traditional Christmas Walk!
Of course, on our way back to the camp, we stopped to sample the soil and moss at a few spots along the way. Tomorrow we will do one last day of field work at a stream across the lake, then we're heading back to McMurdo. It'll be nice to get a shower, do some laundry, and sleep inside for a while!

Life at a Field Camp

2008-12-23T21:14:00.002+13:00

We have been at the Lake Fryxell Camp for a few days now. There are a few permanent buildings here. The circular building is called a Jamesway. That is where we spend most of our time in camp. It has a kitchen for cooking, tables for eating and working, and wireless internet access! The other smaller buildings are laboratories for doing our science. Outside there is a lot of equipment needed for the science we do here.
We don't sleep in any of these buildings. We sleep outside in tents, like the one in the front of the picture. Because the ground is so rocky, it's hard to pound in tent stakes that won't easily fall out, so we tie our tent down to large rocks. We have very warm sleeping bags and lots of padding. When it's sunny out, the tent feels a lot like a green house, and some nights I get so hot that I actually end up kicking off most of my layers as I sleep!

Because the dry valleys are a polar desert, we have to be very careful about our water use. The water we use is taken from the lake. Water for drinking is filtered or cooked on the stove. We have to be careful that we don't spill any water outside, because in a desert, any small addition of water we make to the soil will make a huge difference to the ecosystem! So, we save all of the water we produce from cooking, washing, and our science. It gets put into barrels like the orange one outside the Jamesway and shipped off the continent at the end of the summer for proper treatment.

Since we have to be so careful about our water, we have no running water or plumbing. Our bathroom is an outhouse where we collect everything we produce. In the picture, the blue door behind my tent is for the outhouse. (I think that's where Elizabeth is walking...) No running water also means we can't shower! We use very little water to wash our faces and brush our teeth.

But, we do have some modern amenities here at the field camp. There's a gas-powered refrigerator, stove, and oven, just like in a normal house. We have a telephone, though the connection isn't always very good. We also have electricity from a big solar panel that you can see all the way to the left in this picture of the lake-side of Fryxell camp:The electricity is mostly used for science. We need to recharge batteries, run our equipment and computers, and of course the wireless internet! But, sometimes we use the electricity for fun. Sometimes we relax after dinner by watching a movie together on a laptop in the Jamesway. (You can see the laptop on the chair in the bottom, left corner). The "couch" we're sitting on is made of plywood with foam sleeping pads strapped to it and covered with an old blanket. Very classy! It's our most comfortable piece of furniture.

(P.S. If our supervisor, Ross, is reading this, I just want you to know that we neeeeever have time to watch movies. We're working all the time, of course! This picture was posed for educational purposes. No relaxing going on here...)

Measuring soil micro-organisms

2008-12-22T18:29:00.008+13:00

Soil in the dry valleys of Antarctica is a hard place to live. It is very cold and very dry. There's not a lot of water available, and most of it is frozen. There's also not a lot of food to eat. But, believe it or not, there are organisms that can live in such a harsh environment. The organisms living in the soil here are all microscopic. That means they are too small to see with your naked eye. But, they are definitely there! We are interested in studying how these organisms change the nutrients in the soil. It's important to know how they change the nutrients because these nutrients are needed by all living things.

Because the soil organisms are so small, it's very hard to study what they do. You can't watch them individually unless you remove them from the soil and look at them under a VERY powerful microscope. So we have to use other ways to measure what the micro-organisms are doing.

One of the ways we measure what organisms do is by measuring their respiration. When living things (including people) breathe, we exhale carbon dioxide. If we're sitting still, we breathe very slowly and exhale small amounts of carbon dioxide. If we are very active and run around a lot, we breathe faster and exhale more carbon dioxide. A whole classroom of people running around can exhale more total carbon dioxide than just one person. So, more carbon dioxide is exhaled by larger numbers of more active organisms.

The soil micro-organisms in Antarctica work the same way. If we measure how much carbon dioxide is being produced in the soil, we can guess how many micro-organisms there are and how active they are. More carbon dioxide being produced would mean there are more active micro-organisms.

We have a fancy machine that helps us measure carbon dioxide in the soil. We nest it over the soil, and it measures how fast the amount of carbon dioxide changes over that patch of soil. It's called an IRGA. Here's me using it:
I am interested in knowing how the amount of carbon dioxide changes if you change the amount of water in the soil. So, I've been measuring carbon dioxide near the lake, where the soil is very wet. As I move the machine farther from the lake edge, the soil gets drier. So by moving the IRGA farther and farther from the lake each day, I am finding out how carbon dioxide respired by micro-organisms changes from wet to dry soil. In this picture, I'm making a measurement pretty close to the lake edge. Today, we moved it several meters farther back, where the soil is less wet. Tomorrow, we will move it even farther away where the soil is very dry. From the information we collect, we will know much is being breathed out by the soil micro-organisms as you go from wet to dry soils. That will let us estimate how many organisms they are and how active they are.

That is one of the ways we measure soil micro-organisms. There are many other things we do to measure what's living in the soil, but that will have to wait for another post!

2008-12-20T17:41:00.009+13:00

This morning we flew from McMurdo Station to Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley.

We left from the helicopter pad at McMurdo, where they loaded all of our gear into a helicopter (we call them helos).
Then, we flew from McMurdo over about 60 miles of sea ice to the dry valleys. Here's a view of what it's like inside the helo. Out the window, you can see the sea ice with Mt. Erebus in the background. You can also see the full load of our gear, and of course Elizabeth!

The dry valleys are de-glaciated, so there is no ice covering the ground. The dry valleys are also a desert, so there is very little snow. So, the rock and soil are exposed, unlike most of Antarctica. Some of the mountains and valleys are still glaciated, though. Parts of those glaciers drop down from the mountains into the dry valleys. In the photo below, you can see the Canada Glacier dropping down from the right into the valley. There are also many lakes in the dry valleys that are fed by the meltwater streams from the glaciers. These lakes are liquid water, but the top layer is frozen. So all of the lakes are topped with a thick layer of ice that you can walk and drive on. In the photo, you can see Lake Fryxell mostly covered in ice in front of the Canada Glacier. Though it doesn't snow very much in the dry valleys, there are small patches that have been slowly built up over time. These patches are very interesting to us, because they can provide water to the soil that would not normally be there. That is one of the things we will be studying at Lake Fryxell in the coming week.

Once we arrived at Fryxell Camp, we quickly set up our camp and got straight to our field work! We want to measure the chemistry of the soil near the snow patches to see if we can find out why mosses grow by some snow patches and not others. So, we hiked away from camp towards some snow patches. Here's Elizabeth and Katie busily collecting soil, moss, and snow samples near Lake Fryxell. We will take the samples back to McMurdo and measure the amount of nutrients and ions in the soil and water.
We're going to be out at Lake Fryxell for about a week before we head back to McMurdo Station. I'll keep you posted on how our field work is going!

Field Prep

2008-12-19T14:45:00.004+13:00

So far, we've been living on station while we prepare ourselves for our field work. Now, the lab is set up, we've collected all of our gear, and we're ready to head out to the field! Tomorrow we will fly by helicopter to Taylor Valley for our first week of field work. We will be living at a field camp while we work there.

Over the past two days, we packed up all of the equipment we will need to live and work for a week. We've packed tents, sleep kits, clothing, food, hiking gear, and our science equipment. It's a total over over 1,000 pounds of gear! We loaded everything up into the truck today and drove it to the helicopter hangar.

At the helicopter hangar, we load everything into carts that will be used to carry our gear to the helicopter tomorrow morning.

We also had a special visitor today. We hosted Flat Madison from Mrs. Melin's class at Lee-Jackson Elementary School in Mathews, Virginia (my home town!). Flat Madison toured McMurdo and is now on her way back to Virginia.
So, if all goes well, we will be flying tomorrow across the Ross Sea to Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley. We will then spend the following week collecting samples, making measurements, and trying to stay warm! Let's hope for good weather tomorrow!

Geology Rocks!

2008-12-17T09:41:00.010+13:00

Though we think of Antarctica as just being cold and ice covered, there is actually a lot of interesting geology here.

First, there is an active volcano! Mount Erebus is the southern-most active volcano in the world! It sits on Ross Island not too far from McMurdo Station, and you can see it from most of the hiking trails around McMurdo. Because Mt. Erebus is so close, most of the rocks in the area are volcanic, like the basalt to the left. These rocks are erupted from the volcano and can travel very far. So, Mt. Erebus's influence is seen all the way across the sea ice in the Dry Valleys where we work. Most of the soil is made up of rocks like these that have been weathered and crushed. That is why most of the soil looks very grey and red. In this panoramic video, you can see the red soils from the volcanic rocks. You also can see Mt. Erebus in the background, puffing away! (The golf-ball looking things house satellites and other scientific equipment.)

There are other neat geological features besides the volcano. Sometimes rock formations will poke out of the ice sheet that covers part of Ross Island. Yesterday Katie and I hiked out to one of those formations called Castle Rock. I took another panoramic video along the way. Most of what you see is snow and ice, but you also see several rock outcrops and hilltops sticking out. Castle Rock is the formation just in front of Mt. Erebus at the beginning (and end) of the video. It looks very small compared to the large volcano, but that's only because we were still very far away when I took the video.

When you get closer to Castle Rock, you see that it's actually quite tall and cool looking! You can see different layers and lots of evidence of weathering. It's something you might expect to see in the western US, not Antarctica!

The hike out to Castle Rock was a nice break for Katie and I. Here we are enjoying my Uncle Ev's World Famous Buffalo Chip Cookies next to the emergency hut (nicknamed the "apple") on the hike:

Elizabeth has made it in to McMurdo! Here flight landed yesterday evening. Now she has to catch up on all of her trainings so that we can head to the field soon!

[Basalt photo from juster.]

Antarctic Geography

2008-12-16T08:46:00.010+13:00

Most maps of the Earth make Antarctica look pretty small. But, actually, Antarctica is a big piece of land. It's just hard to visualize it on maps that split Antarctica in half, like this one:

But that's not what Antarctica actually looks like. If you look at the globe from the bottom, you'll see that Antarctica is shaped kind of like a porkchop.

Antarctica is the 5th largest continent on Earth, so it's not as big as North America. But, it's much larger than the United States:
Since the South Pole is in Antarctica, finding "north" is tricky. All points from the South Pole are to the north. It means that the map of Antarctica can be flipped any direction and it's always both right-side up and upside down! But, the map of Antarctica is usually viewed like this:So, the bottom half of the map is up-side down. McMurdo is on the bottom half of the map, but it's not to the south of the South Pole. It's to the north!

Antarctica is divided into two halves: East Antarctica and West Antarctica. The halves are divided by the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range that run across the continent.

Antarctica is a continent, which means it's made out of land. There is soil all over Antarctica. But, most of Antarctica is covered in ice on top of the soil. Most of the land is covered in glaciers. That's all of the white on the map. However, there are small areas of the continent where the glaciers have retreated. That's what's brown on the map. Most of these areas are in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains on the coast of the Ross Sea. Those are the Dry Valleys where we work.

In addition to land covered in ice, some of the water around Antarctica is also permanently frozen. The grey-ish areas on the map in the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea are the permanent ice. It never melts, so is often treated like part of the continent, even though it's technically water.

McMurdo is on an island in the frozen Ross Sea called Ross Island. It lies at an area where the permanent ice meats the sea ice. During the colder months, the Ross Sea will be frozen far to the north of Ross Island. But, during the summer months (right now), the sea ice gradually melts back. Sometimes it even melts as far back as McMurdo, and the open ocean will be right on our doorstep. But, it never melts back farther than the permanent ice.

So, right now, where we sit in McMurdo on Ross Island, we are surrounded mostly by ice. There's permanent ice to the south and sea ice to the west. Across the sea ice we see the Trans-Antarctic Mountains in the distance. To the north, there is more sea ice and in the distance we can see the open ocean on the horizon. Once we get to the Dry Valleys (hopefully this weekend), our scenery will be very different!

Now that we've mostly finished getting the lab set up and our gear collected, we've been able to start on some science in the lab. We have to prepare the chemicals that we'll use to process soil samples. We also have to make up the solutions that we'll add to the soil in the field for our experiment. Here is Katie hard at work in the lab weighing chemicals:

Our third team member, Elizabeth, should be arriving in McMurdo today. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather stays good so that her plane can land!

Snow School!

2008-12-14T12:24:00.006+13:00

This is the first time I've been to McMurdo Station, so I've had to attend many different trainings since I've arrived. I've learned about taking care of the environment, working around helicopters, and using the laboratory here at McMurdo. But best of all I went to Snow School. I got to spend two days out on the ice learning about cold weather survival. On the first day, a HUGE Delta vehicle took our instructor, 7 other students, and me from McMurdo to Snow Mound City. Once we got there, we had to set up camp since we would be spending the night. Our instructor showed us how to set up different kinds of winter tents and build a snow wall to protect the camp from wind. The picture above shows our instructor demonstrating how to properly stake the tents so they don't blow away in the wind.
Several people in the class tried to build different kinds of shelters with blocks of snow. Two students built a very cool two room house. We all spent the night in either tents or the shelters we built. The next day we practiced communicating with different radios used in Antarctica. We used VHF and HF radios. We tried to talk to the South Pole with an HF, but no one answered us. We also learned what it is like to get lost in a snow storm. We all wore buckets on our heads and tried to look for each other. During huge storms the wind blows snow around so much that you can't see a thing, so wearing a bucket on your head is very similar to what it's really like to be lost in a storm. In the afternoon a Delta came and took us back to McMurdo Station. It's amazing how much I learned in just two days! Safety is very important when you live and work in a cold environment. Snow School is designed to give everyone the tools to make smart decisions, prevent problems, and safely do their work and enjoy this wonderful continent. Now I can say I've spent the night out on the ice in Antarctica.

Getting set up at McMurdo

2008-12-11T14:09:00.008+13:00

McMurdo Station is located on Ross Island, about 60-70 miles from mainland Antarctica. It feels like a small town, with lots of buildings where people work, live, and play. But, unlike most towns, the buildings are all very industrial-looking. Most of them are warehouses with no windows to protect them from the strong winds and storms common in Antarctica.
Ross Island is surrounded by water, but the top layer of the water is frozen. As the summer progresses, the sea ice melts, causing the open ocean to come closer to McMurdo Station. But right now, the open sea is still quite a ways away to the North.

Across the sea ice from McMurdo to the west are the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. The mountains make up the edge of mainland Antarctica. The Dry Valleys where we will be doing our research are in those mountains. You can see them in the distance across the sea ice from McMurdo:

We're the first from our group to arrive in McMurdo. Next week, most of the rest of our group will arrive. So, Katie and I have just a few more quiet days before everyone else shows up and it starts to get busy!

During our first few days here in McMurdo, Katie and I have been busy getting set up for the next two months' work. This includes stocking our laboratory with all the items we'll need for our science, gathering our camping gear for the field, and gathering the equipment we'll need for our field work.
So, we've been spending a lot of time in the lab since we've been here. Here is a quick "tour" of the lab we're setting up, with a look at the nice view we have outside our window!

We also attend a lot of different training courses to learn about safety and other protocols that we need to know around McMurdo and the field. Since this is Katie's first year, she gets to go to Snow School tomorrow. Snow School is a fun 2-day class that includes a camping trip out on the sea ice. At Snow School, the Happy Campers learn about important Antarctic safety and other procedures.

We are in Antarctica!

2008-12-10T08:54:00.009+13:00

We have finally arrived in McMurdo, Antarctica!

We woke up very early Tuesday morning in Christchurch to take our flight to McMurdo. Our first stop is the U.S. Antarctic Program headquarters to get suited up in all of our cold weather gear. It's summer in New Zealand, so it's very hot to walk around in all of that clothing!
Once we are dressed, it is time to fly! We fly to Antarctica on U.S. Air Force airplanes. So, we don't travel through the normal airport. Instead, we use a special USAP terminal. But, the process is very similar to a regular airport. We check in with our baggage and go through a metal detector. Our bags also go through an x-ray machine. But, instead of having an airline agent check us in, we're checked in by the New Zealand military, and we and all of our luggage are weighed on a big scale. After checking in, we wait in our terminal until it is time to board the plane. Throughout all of this, we're still wearing our cold-weather gear! So, of course, we start taking off layers as we wait.
Soon, it was time to board the plane. We flew on a US Air Force C-17. This plane is very big! There were only about 12 passengers traveling to Antarctica, plus the Air Force crew that fly the plane. The rest of the plane was full of cargo bound for Antarctica. The cargo was to be air-dropped over one of the remote field camps where planes are not able to land. That is how the field camp receives its regular supplies of food, fuel, and equipment. We, the scientists, sat on the side of the plane. In front of us were about 100 barrels of fuel strapped to parachutes on egg-carton pallets. After dropping us off at McMurdo, the plane flew to the field site, opened the hatch, and dropped the barrels out. The parachutes will open, and the egg carton pallets will act as shock-absorbers to soften the impact when the barrels hit the ground.

We were very disappointed that we didn't get to see the air-drop! But, it's probably easier for the Air Force crew to perform the air-drop without a bunch of scientists in the way...

After one last five-hour flight, we landed in McMurdo! Here is Katie enjoying her first sight of Antarctica!

From the runway, we are carried to McMurdo Station in a really big truck called a Delta.

After about 20 minutes driving across the sea ice, we arrive in McMurdo Station- our new home for the next two months! We will spend the next several days getting settled. I will tell you more about that in my next post.

Arrival in New Zealand

2008-12-08T18:07:00.003+13:00

Katie and I have successfully arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand! Our flights were long, but relatively easy.

Travel to Antarctica is always a little bit chaotic. Plans can change at the last minute. As soon as we arrived at our hotel in Christchurch, we learned that our flight to Antarctica had changed. Instead of leaving two days later, we're leaving first thing tomorrow morning! Even though we would have preferred a nap after our 36 hours of traveling from Dartmouth, we immediately had to leave the hotel to collect all of our issued cold weather gear and repack our bags.

There are many layers of clothing that we wear while we're on the Ice. We have to try on all of the clothes to make sure they fit. Because Antarctica is very cold, we have three layers of clothes for warmth. We wear polypro long underwear pants and shirts , and then two layers of fleece. In this photo, Katie is wearing one of the fleece layers:
We also have special boots called "bunny boots". The boots are very insulated and water-proof to make sure our feet stay warm and dry. The insulation makes these boots very bulky and heavy, so walking in them can become hard!

On top of the warm clothes, we have a wind-proof layer. We wear a down parka with a fur-lined hood, wind pants, and goggles. Here is a photo of Katie wearing all of her layers, ready for the Ice!
Once we have picked out all of our clothes, we pack everything into the two orange duffel bags. Those two bags contain all of the gear and clothing we will use for the next two months!

After we were outfitted with our gear, we were finally able to return to our hotel to relax. But, our flight to Antarctica is very early tomorrow morning. We have to leave the hotel by 6 A.M. So, after a quick walk around town to enjoy the warmth and dinner at our favorite restaurant in Christchurch, we are going to bed. We have been traveling for a long time, and are very tired!

Keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates and we make it to McMurdo tomorrow!

And I'm off!

2008-12-07T01:07:00.000+13:00

My travel to Antarctica has begun! I'm currently on the bus heading to the airport. Keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates and I make all of my connections!

Next time I talk to you, I'll be in New Zealand!

Packing Up

2008-12-02T12:19:00.005+13:00

Four days left before I leave for Antarctica!

We are busily packing up everything we'll need for our 2 months of field work. A lot of what we need is already at McMurdo Station, but there's a lot we need to take from Dartmouth.

There's a lot of different equipment we will need to do our field work. Most of it has already been shipped to McMurdo Station! We've sent down a few pieces of machinery to help us measure the chemistry of the air, water, and soil. This Irga on the right is just one of the machines we shipped down to use. We also pack up a lot of maps, books, and paperwork that are useful while we're working in the field and laboratory.

We also have to pack up our personal belongings that we'll need to live for 2 months. We can only pack what is most important, because we are only allowed to bring down two of these orange duffle bags! Most of what I pack are warm clothes. I pack a lot of wool and fleece socks and long underwear, hats, and gloves. I also have to pack everything I need to take a shower, protect myself from the sun, and sleep. I also pack a few things to do when I can relax, like books and music.
The strangest thing I pack is probably a pair of flip-flops. You might not think anyone would want to wear sandals in Antarctica, but they're nice to put on when you come inside. Those boots are big and heavy, and your feet get sweaty and tired! And you certainly don't want to put those boots on if you need to go down the hall to the bathroom in the middle of the night!

And, of course I have to pack my computer and camera so that I can blog while I'm there! Those will be the last things to get packed on Friday night.

12 Days to Go!

2008-11-25T07:18:00.006+13:00

We have just a couple more weeks here at Dartmouth before we leave for Antarctica!

Katie and I will leave Dartmouth on December 6, which means we will land in Christchurch, New Zealand two days later on December 8! We will spend 33 hours traveling, which is not actually two whole days. When you fly to New Zealand from the west coast of the U.S., you cross the International Date Line. As soon as you cross it, it's tomorrow!

You can check out an interactive map of our travel by clicking here!

Once in New Zealand, we will have 2 days to be outfitted with our cold weather gear and pack for Antarctica. We are scheduled to fly from Christchurch to McMurdo, Antarctica on December 10 (New Zealand time).

(Elizabeth and Ross will be joining us in Antarctica a bit later, because they have to stay at Dartmouth long enough to finish teaching their classes this semester.)

Welcome to Season 2!

2008-11-18T05:43:00.006+13:00

Welcome to another field season of research in Antarctica with the Dartmouth polar soils research group!

If you are new to the Polar Soils blog, here is some information that might be useful to you:

Where we go:
When most people think of Antarctica, they think of ice. When you're on the continent of Antarctica, it's referred to as being on the "ice." However, the area we study is a polar desert called the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where the glaciers have retreated. Just like deserts in the U.S., there's very little precipitation, so there's actually bare soil, not just ice and snow! The red dot on the map shows where McMurdo is located:

What we do:
Our research is in the field of soil biogeochemistry, which is just a big word that means we study the way nutrient elements move in the soil. We are especially interested in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, since these three elements are so important for all forms of life. We study how the living organisms influence nutrients in the soil. All of the animals in the dry valleys are microscopic (except for the scientists, of course). While other areas of Antarctica have penguins and seals, the dry valleys' largest animal is a nematode. A predatory nematode is the top of our foodchain- the equivalent to a lion in the Serengeti! We also study the mosses growing in the dry valley soil. Mosses are the only plants growing in the dry valleys and the only living things you'll find above the soil- the equivalent to the redwood forests in America!

Who we are:
Our research team is a little bit different from last year. There are four soil scientists going to Antarctica from Dartmouth. The leader is Dr. Ross Virginia, a professor at Dartmouth who has been going to Antarctica for many years. Also on the team are me (Becky, a postdoc), Elizabeth (a graduate student), and Katie (an undergraduate student). While on the ice, we will continue to work very closely with another group of scientists from Colorado State University led by Dr. Diana Wall that specializes in the nematodes (they have a special nematode blog). Together all of us study the nutrients and biology of the McMurdo Dry Valley soils.

About the blog:
Our blog is designed to be an educational tool for elementary and middle school classrooms, but all readers are welcome to follow along! Teachers interested in using the blog in their classes are welcome to contact me (contact information available through my website, listed under my Profile on the bottom-right).
On the right-hand side, there are some links with additional information that is useful for both kids and adults. Many links are added throughout the season, so keep an eye on them!

Last Post from Norway

2008-07-30T08:33:00.004+12:00

For fun the last week, a few of us went kayaking across the fjord, and we saw a ptarmigan with 9 youngsters.(click here to learn more about ptarmigans, and click here to hear their call!)

Then we had a exam... not very exciting. After that, it has been just packing up and a lovely hike yesterday. (I sent my camera-computer cable home, so no downloads) .

I am off to Tromso now, and then some traveling in the Lofoten Islands!

Norwegian cruise

2008-07-27T09:32:00.020+12:00

Well, the 3rd week offered us something different! Our course contracted a small ship, the M/S Stockholm out of Gotenburg Sweden, for three days to take us to different places.

The first place, Alkhornet (above), had incredible cliffs full of nesting auks and guillemots.

(Click here to learn more about guillemots, and click here to hear their call!)

We measured nitrogen fixing by cyanobacteria in small chambers using acetylene gas as a proxy.











The next day we went to Sassen Valley (right) and did similar measurements, then cruised past a huge glacier (left) and saw a ringed seal, hauled out on a small iceberg.

(Click here to learn more about ringed seals.)

We also saw a great number of puffins.

(Click here to learn more about puffins, and click here to hear their call!)

The 3rd day we headed off to a abandoned Russian coal mining town, Pyramiden (below).

It's very strange to see the building still in good condition with belongings still in the rooms and dead plants hanging in the windows. It was abandoned in 1998, when the coal ran out, and most of the people were moved to Barentsburg.

Norwegian animals

2008-07-25T01:57:00.006+12:00

There are many tourist ships, and people come here to see glaciers and ice and the many beautiful flowers and mosses, the large numbers of birds, and they hope for a glimpse of the few land animals- polar bears, reindeer, and arctic foxes. There are also sea animals like whales and seals that are sometimes sighted.

Here are some photos of the animals that have been spotted by Elizabeth so far. Click on the animal name to learn more information about them!

Arctic tern:
(Click here, then click "play" to hear an Arctic Tern call!)

Barnacle geese:
(Click here, then click "play" to hear a barnacle goose call!)

Auks nesting:

Arctic fox :

No encounters with a polar bear yet!

About Svalbard, Norway

2008-07-21T07:26:00.005+12:00

I have been giving the news, but thought a bit of background might be helpful.

Svalbard became Norwegian territory in 1925, though the Russians and others have kept mineral rights here and continue to mine coal. Svalbard is an archipelago of islands: three major ones, and lots of smaller ones and is the furthest northern settled land. The largest community is Longyearbyen, where I am at the University in Svalbard, but the town was named for an American who started the first coal mine here: John Longyear.

The latitude of the islands runs from 74 to 81 degrees N, and Longyearbyen is at 78 degrees. They do a small bit of coal mining here but all the coal is used to run the power plant for town, and it is the only coal-fired plant in Norway. Like our research area in Antarctica, there are about 4 months of continuous darkness in winter and 4 months of continuous daylight in summer. The temperature is a bit warmer due to the Gulf Stream, particularly on the west coast: the summer average is 40 deg F (5 deg C) and the winter is 10 deg F (-12 deg C).