Back in New Zealand

I spent the past two days in McMurdo waiting to fly home. Luckily I didn't have to spend those days in Mactown alone! Brendan and Lily came back into Mactown, as well. Brendan was fixing his infrared camera. This camera is different from a regular camera because it takes pictures of heat, in the form of infrared energy. Surfaces that are warmer emit more infrared energy and show up white. Cooler areas emitting less infrared energy are dark. We took a picture of my face with the camera. You can see that my nose and cheeks are colder than the rest of my face. That makes sense, since I'm in Antarctica! 

Don't I look creepy in infrared?!

Brendan of course won't be using his infrared camera on faces. He will be using this on the the terrain in the dry valleys to help find water tracks. The infrared camera will show where the ground is warmer than the surrounding areas. That will help us visualize where there is likely to be liquid water in a water track without being able to see the water itself from the surface.

Then, today, I finally made it back to New Zealand! After being delayed by two days, we were finally able to take off. The runway that we normally use for the Airbus and C-17's has been closed until February, because it was melting. (A storm had blown a lot of black soil onto the runway, which caused it to melt faster in the unseasonably warm temperatures.) Instead, we had to fly in a different type of airplane that has skis: a LC-130. However, the skiway for these planes was not designed for planes so heavy as a LC-130 carrying passengers and enough fuel to get all the way to Christchurch. They're normally used for travel within the continent of Antarctica, not for going to New Zealand. So, we had to wait a few days while they did work on the runway to make it ready. They finally did it! Here's our group of passengers loading onto the plane. Most of us had been trying for several days to leave, so we were nervous the entire time that they would cancel us. Once we finally were in the air, everyone on the plane applauded! Now we're in New Zealand, but our journey has come to another halt. There are no seats available on the airline to get us home to the U.S.! So now we are once again sitting and waiting. At least we're one big step closer to home!

End of the season close-out

I'm back at McMurdo Station (which we refer to as being back in "Mactown"). I'm preparing myself to head back to the U.S. after a very short field season!

One thing I have to do is prepare all of my soil samples for transport back to Arizona State University. All of the samples that were scooped in the field were sent back to McMurdo Station where they were kept in a freezer. Yesterday, I carefully packaged all of those samples for shipment. They were double-bagged for extra protection and packaged into Thermosafe boxes. The Thermosafes are essentially big, sturdy cardboard boxes lined with styrofoam. Every sample I took is in the two boxes shown on the left. They're sitting in the -10 Celcius walk-in freezer in the lab, ready for their trip home! At temperatures that cold, we are able to prevent the soils from changing, so when I work with them from home, they will be as similar to field conditions as possible.

I've also packed up some of my sampling gear to be shipped home, as well. The samples and gear won't be flying home with me. They'll be taking the slow route on the vessel. At the end of every season, there are a few boats that come to McMurdo Station to deliver or carry away supplies. An ice breaker has to come in to clear a path through the ice. Then, the fuel tanker, research vessels full of marine scientists, and supply vessel can dock. The supply vessel brings down food and other supplies for the following year, and leaves with all of our samples and shipments. It will deliver the samples to Port Hueneme, California, which will take a while! I won't see my samples until March or April.

I was supposed to fly back to New Zealand today, but the ice runway is melting again! My flight today was canceled, but hopefully I'll be able to begin the journey home tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Other fancy equipment

Aside from our measurements and samples that we take in the field, we have a few other pieces of equipment we use in the field to learn about the water tracks.

Soil temperature is being measured continuously in the water tracks. Soil temperature, of course, influences the melting of the water that creates the water tracks. To measure soil temperature, sensors are buried in the soil. They are attached to a data logger above ground, which records the temperature on a regular basis all year. A solar panel provides enough power to keep it running most of the year. Each year, we have to stop by and download the data. Here is Joe downloading the data from one of those loggers and replacing it with a fresh logger.

We've also been mapping the topography of the water tracks. The shape of the land surface influences how the water flows, so it's important to record each bump and turn in the land. To map the topography, we use a process called LIDAR. There is a special laser that shoots out an infrared beam. That infrared beam bounces off the land surface back to the source, and the speed at which the beam is returned will be influenced by the shape of the land surface. (Just think: The beam hitting a hill will come back sooner than the beam hitting the land farther away below it.) This way you can create a model of the surface in a computer using millions and millions of data points! Using this modern technology, we can determine the shape of the surface down to the scale of centimeters, and we can see how water is flowing through the soil in Antarctica and providing nutrients to the delicate ecosystems that exist here.

One new piece of equipment that we're using this year is an induction sounder. It measures how salty the soil is as you walk along! It does this by using a metal coil (inside the orange thing Joe is carrying), which creates a magnetic field. (That's called "inducing" a magnetic field, which is why it's called an induction sounder.) That magnetic field shoots into the soil, which bounces back as an electric field. Saltier soil bounces the electric field back differently than less salty soil, which is why we're able to measure how salty the soil is as we walk. The reason for measuring soil salinity is because water tracks tend to be very salty. Even if we can't see the water track on the surface, we can find them based on how salty the soil is.


Today was my last official day of field work. Tomorrow, I head back to McMurdo Station to finish up my work, pack my gear, and get ready to head back to the U.S. A short, but productive, field season!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It's already 2013 here in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Our entire crew is finally all together at Lake Bonney camp. We had a very overcast and snowy New Year's Eve, as you can see from this photo, but we woke up to a warm and sunny 2013!

Chris, Brendan, Joe, Kelly, Becky, Brendan, Alex
Lily & Jay

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.