Life at a Field Camp

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

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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.