Preparing to start 2023 in Antarctica

The start of 2023 will bring the start of our next field season in Antarctica! Hannah and I will soon be traveling to Antarctica. We will continue studying how plants interact with soil biology and chemistry during ecological succession as glaciers retreat. (If you want to remember more about our project, you can read these posts from last year's field season.)

Just like last year, we will fly from the U.S. to Punta Arenas, Chile. We will pick up our research gear, and then travel to King George Island, Antarctica.

This year will be a little bit different, though. First we will spend a couple of weeks on a research vessel named the Betanzos. We will visit sites around the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula, sampling sites on the west and east side of the Peninsula. It will be a very exciting opportunity to collect data at new sites where ecological succession is happening along glacier edges!

The red dots show the sites we hope to visit while on board the Betanzos.

After our trip on the Betanzos, we will return to Base Escudero on King George Island. We will revisit our study sites from last year to check on our experiments.

Our research team, plus some new friends, at Escudero during our last field season

We begin our journey soon! We may not have internet for much of our field season, so there may not be a lot of blog posts this year. I will update you as often as I can, though!