Happy Antarctica Day!

This Saturday is Antarctica Day! December 1st is the anniversary of the day the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959. This is a special date, because the treaty set aside Antarctica as a place “forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes… in the interests of all mankind.”  It preserves an entire continent as a place of scientific discovery and peaceful international cooperation. That feels like a rare thing in this day and age!

This is a video produced by Polar Educators International (PEI) to celebrate Antarctica Day:

You can also click on this image to view a poster to learn more about Antarctica Day.

You might be asking yourself: How can I best celebrate Antarctica Day? There are a lot of activities you could do!

For example, you can make a flag to be displayed in Antarctica! You can send in your own drawing of an Antarctica-inspired flag to be displayed by Antarctic scientists in the month of December. All you have to do is draw a flag, turn it into an electronic file, and send! Click here for more information. (Is English not your best language? Click here for translations of this activity into other languages.)

Another idea is to launch a virtual "Antarctica Day balloon". You can join others around the world in celebrating the peaceful, scientific mission that the Antarctic Treaty secures. This website tells you how!

I hope you do something special to celebrate Antarctica Day. I'll be celebrating by getting myself ready to head to the Ice. I leave two weeks from today. Time to start packing!

Water Track Time-Lapse Videos

As I mentioned in my last post, I'll be studying water tracks this coming field season. Because water tracks are fed by melting ice, they don't always have a lot of water flowing in them (and perhaps none at all at some points in time). That means that one day, we'll be at a site without  any sign of a water track, but then it'll appear later, then disappear again.

In this video, you can see Wormherder Creek appear at the beginning of the summer as melt begins. This is the water track I showed you in my previous post. The video runs from November through December of 2010. The water track is in the bottom third of the picture. You can see that, at the beginning of the video in November, there's only a trace of the water track, but it gets wetter (making the soil become darker) over time.



The time lapse video was put together by one of my collaborators, who positioned a camera and set it to take a photo at regular intervals. When you patch those together in order, you get the time lapse video. So, you also see the movement of the sun, which casts a darker shadow later in the day when the sun is behind the mountains. You can see the change in the weather, with some cloudy days and some sunny days. You can even catch a snow storm towards the end of the video in December!

In the next time lapse video, you can see water tracks appear on the mountain sides above Lake Bonney: They don't show up until later in the video, but they're very noticeable when they do! They'll be on the left side of the screen, and you can watch that downhill movement of water from the melting of ice higher up in the mountain. Remember, the video covers December through January, so it took a while for the water to move that distance. The water moves like an underground stream, but not quite as fast as a surface stream!

Water tracks: the focus for season 5

I am beginning preparations for my fifth season on the ice! This year I will be working with a team of geologists studying features called water tracks.

Water tracks are sort of like underground streams. A water track is a band of shallow groundwater seeping through soils, moving downhill, but without any flow on the surface. Instead of flowing on the surface, the water is flowing through the active layer (which is what we call the top layer of soil above the permafrost where biology and chemistry can be active). That means we don't see flowing water on the surface. We just see wet soil. Here is a photo of a water track from January 2009. See how the wet soil is darker than the surrounding, dry soil?

The water comes from melting ice. Water tracks are fed by melting glaciers, permafrost, and snow. That water percolates through the soil down until it hits the permafrost. It can't go deeper, so it starts moving downhill through the soil. Because ice melt is what feeds water tracks, we see more water tracks appear during extraordinarily warm summers.

One water track that reappears every time we have a warm summer is lovingly called Wormherder Creek. (It's named after the nickname for our research group, the Wormherders.) Here's a panorama I took of Wormherder Creek a couple years ago. You can see that the water track starts uphill and continues all the way down to the lake. With this particular water track, water sometimes also flows above the surface (when the melt water is coming in large volumes), which is why it's called a "creek".

We want to know how the appearance of water tracks changes the soil chemistry and biology, and what that means for the ecosystem as a whole. As you might be able to guess from the video of Wormherder Creek, when water moves through the soil, it makes it wetter, but it also carries along salts and other solutes to new locations. All of the stuff dissolved in the melting water is moving through the soil (to eventually be dumped into Lake Bonney below), and that can influence the behavior of the organisms living in the soil (like bacteria and nematodes).

For the organisms living in the soil, all of that extra water could be very stimulating! Organisms living in the soil are limited by water, because the McMurdo Dry Valleys are a desert. When you add water to desert soil, it could stimulate the microbes and invertebrates to be more active. However, along with the water comes a lot of salt, which could be very harmful to the biology. (Think about what would happen if you dropped a freshwater fish into the salty ocean. It can't survive! The same thing happens to soil organisms when their environment suddenly becomes saltier.) We don't know yet how soil biology, overall, respond to water tracks. Is the need for water in the desert a more powerful influence than the harmful influence of salt? That's exactly what our research this season will tell us!

I will be leaving for the Ice in mid-December to begin measuring the biological response to water tracks. In the meantime, I've been getting my equipment ready and sending it on its way to McMurdo Station. It takes a lot longer for the equipment to get to Antarctica than it will take me, so it has to have a head start.

Happy Antarctica Day!

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 Treaty:

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

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!

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

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."