Wormherder Creek

Yesterday we moved to a different field camp further inland at Lake Bonney. Here, we will be sampling another water track. So, today, we traveled around the lake to a water track called Wormherder Creek, which I've worked on quite a bit before. To get there, we took the only wheeled vehicles allowed in the dry valleys: ATVs.

ATVs are only allowed to drive on the lake ice, because their wheels would damage the soil ecosystem. We rode the ATVs around to the west side of the lake where Wormherder Creek flows.

At Wormherder Creek, I helped locate the flow of water in the water track so that we could sample the water belowground. How do you find a water track, you might wonder? Well, Joe demonstrates int his photo. You poke around in the ground with a steel rod until it comes out wet. (Just like finding out if a cake is done baking!)

Once we found the flow of groundwater in the water track, Kelly and I set up piezometers. Piezometers are like miniature wells. They are pipes we pound into the ground that we use to pull up the groundwater. I had to carry a bunch of stuff up to the very top of the water track, where the glacier melts to release the water that feeds the water track. I didn't have my backpack with me, so I put everything into my pockets. I felt like Where's Waldo!

In this picture, I have the following items on me:
- a trowel to take soil samples from the piezometer location
- a metal mallet to pound in the piezometer
- plastic bags for soil and water samples
- two field notebooks
- Joe's fancy camera to document the water track
- a GPS to document the location
- two piezometer tubes
- the steel rod for finding the groundwater flow
- a probe that measures soil moisture, temperature, and conductivity
- a pencil, a pen, and two sharpies


I don't have any pictures that show how far up we walked up a steep incline. This picture is from almost the top, once it flattened out a bit. It was quite a hike carrying all of that in my pockets!

Tomorrow we go back to Wormherder Creek so that I can measure CO2 flux. That will be my last scientific activity of 2012, because that will be New Year's Eve for us!

Sampling water tracks

We are now at Lake Hoare camp sampling water tracks.

My role is to measure soil respiration on the water tracks. That means I'm measuring how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is coming from the soil. That CO2 comes from the respiration of all the microorganisms living in the soil: the bacteria, fungi, nematodes, rotifers, and other tiny creatures that breath in oxygen and breath out CO2 (just like we do!). By measuring how much CO2 they're producing, I am estimating how much biological activity there is in the soil. We want to know if there's more or less activity in the water track than there is outside the water track.

To measure respiration, I use an "infrared gas analyzer". It's a fancy machine that measures the concentration of CO2 in the air above the soil. Here it is:

The white chamber (that looks kind of like a lantern) nests over the soil. It carefully sucks up the air coming from the soil and pumps it to the yellow box, which contains the analyzer. The analyzer shoots an infrared beam through the gas sample. CO2 absorbs infrared energy (which is why it's a greenhouse gas), so the amount of infrared energy that makes it all the way through the gas sample tells us how much CO2 is in the gas. The computer in the analyzer takes that information and calculates a respiration rate using a lot of math equations that describe the physics of CO2 and gas. All of the data gets stored by the analyzer, which I later download to my computer.

While I was measuring CO2, Lily was running ahead of me measuring soil moisture at each site. She used a probe to do that, which is what you see in the picture above. The probe shoots out a gentle electrical pulse, and measures how long it takes to get the pulse back. Water conducts electricity, so the higher the voltage that returns, the wetter the soil is.

After taking respiration and moisture measurements along the water track, I take a soil sample from the each location. We use a trowel to scoop the soil into a plastic bag. That bag will get packaged, frozen, and shipped back to Arizona State University for more measurements.

I will measure the biomass of critters in the soil that are doing the respiring. That will tell me how many organisms are producing the measured amount of CO2. I'll also measure other properties of the soil that influence the movement of CO2, such as soil texture and water content.

Yesterday, Lily and I sampled one water track on the north shore of Lake Hoare. Today, Joe and I will fly across to the south shore to sample another. It's great being able to finally get our work done!

First day in the field

We finally made it to the field! The weather yesterday was very nice, so we were able to fly across McMurdo sound to the Dry Valleys! First, the helicopter dropped Chris, Brendan, and I off at New Harbor camp at the mouth of the valley. There, we were reunited with the rest of our team members.

Chris and Brendan stayed at New Harbor, but I had to skip right to the second field site, because I'm behind schedule. Now, I'm at Lake Hoare with some other members of our team that were already in the field: Kelly, Lily, and Joe. Shortly after landing, we got to work on the water tracks!  While we were out in the field, I used my MP3 player and its little speaker, so that's why they're dancing.

We started setting up the field work that I'll be working on today. I'll post more about that later when I have a bit more time.

Merry Christmas from the Ice!

Well, we never made it to the field. The weather didn't clear up enough to be safe for flying until after the holiday break began. That means that the three of us are sitting around McMurdo Station for a couple of extra days. So what did we do? We went back to the helicopter hangar and brought all of our gear back to the lab, so that we could at least spend the time fine-tuning our equipment in the lab, instead of the field.

To move gear between the lab and hangar, I drive the truck. I love driving big trucks, so this part of the job is very fun! All of our gear is in that yellow cart. We put about 500 lbs of it into the bed of the truck and drove it back to the lab.

Because we didn't make it to the field, we're celebrating Christmas from McMurdo Station. It's not quite as special as spending Christmas in the field, but everybody tries to make it a good time! Last night, on Christmas Eve, we had a large feast at the Galley (the common dining hall). There was steak, lobster tail, stuffing, potatoes, salad, and lots of desserts to choose from. It was quite good, considering the difficulties of getting fresh food down to Antarctica! Here's Brendan and I sitting down to our goodies:

 Since we aren't able to do much work from here, we spent some time walking around station to enjoy the outdoors. During the summer, there's 24 hours of daylight in the Antarctic. That means the sun was shining on us on Christmas Eve through the storm clouds. Here's our view looking down on McMurdo Station on Christmas Eve:

We've been rescheduled to fly to the field tomorrow (Wednesday). Let's hope the weather clears up and we can finally make it! We're starting to go stir-crazy!

Weather delay

We were scheduled to fly this morning to New Harbor, but we woke up to falling snow. This is what it looks like at McMurdo Station right now:

Our friend Peggy models in the snow. (Peggy runs the Food Room where we get all of our field rations.)

The bad weather has made visibility very poor. That means we're stuck in McMurdo, because the helicopters can't fly when visibility is poor. If we can't see across the sound to the Dry Valleys on the mainland, we're not able to fly there. This is the view from our lab window right now. Normally you can see straight across McMurdo Sound to view the mountains on the mainland (which is where we're trying to go). You can't even see them today!

We're technically only delayed right now, so there's a chance we'll get out later, but it's not looking good! If we don't get out today, we'll be stuck in McMurdo until Wednesday, because of the Christmas holiday. That would be bad, because we have work to do out in the Dry Valleys!

Getting ready for the field

We've spent the past two days at McMurdo Station getting ready to go to the field. We've had several different training sessions (too many!), and we've unpacked and set up our gear. We then packed it all back up again and dropped it off at the helicopter hangar. We've gathered together all of our camping and survival gear, which is also at the helicopter hangar. Currently, we have a total of 1,149 pounds of gear at the hangar to fly into the field tomorrow. And that doesn't even count the weight for the three of us and our bags of clothing and other personal gear! We're scheduled to fly by helicopter tomorrow morning to New Harbor, our first field site.

At New Harbor, we won't have internet connection, so it will be a few days before I'm able to post. But after Christmas, we will fly to our next field site at Lake Hoare, where I will be able to get online.

Arrival in McMurdo

We finally made it to McMurdo! Last night, we packed all of our gear, donned our ECW, and boarded the plane to fly to McMurdo. Here's a photo of Brendan, Chris, and I all packed and ready to go. (Notice the NASA scientist on the left is the one least capable of packing light.)

We're packed and ready to go!

Once we're dressed and packed, we wheel our carts over to the "pax terminal". ("Pax" is short for "passenger".) We hand over all of our checked luggage, which gets weighed. We can check as many bags as we want, but we have to stay under 150 lbs. We then have to step on the scale ourselves, along with all of our carry-on and ECW, so that the pilots know how much weight they're carrying. We watch a couple more training videos, and then we're off!

Normally, we fly on U.S. Air Force cargo planes. It's pretty fun, but not very luxurious. This year, however, we traveled to Antarctica in style! We flew on an Airbus 319, just like a commercial flight! Instead of flying in a cold, loud cargo plane on a jump seat made out of webbing, we sat in plush leather seats like first class, and we each got our own row! Instead of all scrambling to look out of one tiny porthole to see the view, we each had our own window! There were even flight attendants serving hot beverages!

Chris shows us how excited he is to be served hot tea by flight attendants on his way to Antarctica.

Because we each had our own window, we got a great view of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains  as we flew over the continent. I think this photo is pretty neat, because of the great cloud formations in the valley over the glacier. Above those clouds, the sky is beautiful and blue! Below those clouds, you feel the reason we weren't able to fly!

View from the Airbus window. I love having my own window!

After a four and a half hour flight, we landed on Pegasus Runway

Me in front of the plane at Pegasus Runway

Since our arrival, we have been VERY busy! We're a day and a half behind because of the delay. We've been busy setting up all of our equipment so that it's ready for use in the field. We've been packing up all of our camping gear and moving it to the helicopter hangar so that we can be ready to fly into the field. We also, of course, have more safety trainings to sit through. The current plan is that we'll be heading into the field on Sunday. Let's hope all goes well!