Welcome to Season 3!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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!