New Outhouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]