Christchurch, New Zealand

We made it to Christchurch on schedule! For the past 24 hours, we've been enjoying some summer weather in New Zealand.

Almost two years ago, in February 2011, Christchurch was rocked by a pretty major earthquake. They had a pretty big earthquake in mid/late 2010, just before I was traveling through New Zealand on my way to Antarctica. There were some aftershocks while I was here in January 2011, and then in February 2011 there was another large quake that destroyed a lot of the city center. Since I've been here preparing for my trip to the ice tonight, I've walked around a bit to see the destruction.

For those of you that have read my blog in previous years, you might remember me posting a picture of the statue of Robert Falcon Scott. R.F. Scott was an Antarctic explorer who made several expeditions to Antarctica, the last one of which he reached the South Pole. Unfortunately, his entire team died on the return trip. R.F. Scott was English, but his expeditions left from New Zealand, so his memory is honored here. There is a statue of him that was sculpted by Scott's widow that stood in the city center.

This is me, with two of my team members, visiting R.F. Scott's statue in Christchurch 5 years ago.

The earthquake knocked it over and broke it into two pieces.

This is where R.F. Scott's statue now lies, in the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, after being broken into two pieces by the earthquake.

An awful lot of the buildings have also been damaged, particularly the ones in the "downtown" city center area. At the heart of City Center is Cathedral Square, where the Christchurch Cathedral stands.

This is a photo I took of the cathedral five years ago.

It survived the first earthquake, but the second major one in February 2011 did a lot of damage. The front end completely fell off! The entirety of Cathedral Square is fenced off. This is as close as I could get.

This is a photo I took yesterday of what remains of the cathedral. It's taken from a different angle. (Essentially, I was standing on the left side of the cathedral, rather than in front.)

This is what most of the streets look like in the City Center right now:

But, the Botanical Gardens, which is my favorite place in Christchurch, is doing just fine. It's as beautiful as always!

Rose Garden at the Christchurch Botanical Gardens

During our time, we've been getting ourselves outfitted for the field. I'll post more about that later!

And I'm off!

The trip has begun! I'm heading on my way back to Antarctica. The next time you hear from me, I'll be in Christchurch, New Zealand! Keep your fingers crossed that all goes according to plan.

Almost time to go!

I have 4 more days in the U.S. before I leave for Antarctica. On Friday I begin the journey south.

You can check out the link on the right to see the interactive version of this map, showing my travel route.

I'll be in transit for a total of 29 hours, from the time I leave my house until the time my plane lands in Christchurch, NZ. Because of the International Date Line, I'll land almost exactly two days later! I then spend a couple days in Christchurch completing some safety trainings, getting outfitted with my Extreme Cold Weather gear (lovingly called our ECW), and enjoying some sunshine and fresh fruit before I finish the journey and fly to McMurdo Station on Tuesday the 18th. That means a week from tomorrow, my feet are scheduled to be on Antarctic soil! Of course, that's assuming the weather cooperates and we can fly according to schedule. You never know...

In the remaining few days before I leave, I'm busy packing the rest of my gear. I have to pack my snow boots, my favorite pairs of long underwear, gloves, hats, and other warm items to be comfortable in the Antarctic summer, which is usually around 0°C in McMurdo at this time of year (that's 32°F). I also have to pack shorts and t-shirts so that I have something to wear in New Zealand, where it will be in the mid-7 to upper-20's °C (that's the 70's in °F). I'll also be packing some field gear that I need to carry with me, like knee pads for getting down to sample soil, the machine I use to measure carbon dioxide flux, notebooks, and my favorite trowel.

Well, I'd better get busy and finish packing!

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!