After a long, challenging, yet successful field season, the rest of B-235 has made it out of the field and back to McMurdo Station. Our gear, which was packed in large crates and prepared to be slung underneath a helo, was delayed ~36 hours due to weather, but everything seems to have made it back in one piece. Our spectrometer, the workhorse of the field season, was quickly prepared for shipping and sent to be loaded onto the resupply vessel, which conveniently arrived this week as well (see below). While I have been scrambling with logistics and end-of-season meetings, Schuyler has been taking the charge on preparing and analyzing the biological samples that we collected towards the end of the field season. She's already mostly done with the analyses, which goes to show how much hard work she's been putting into everything! Last week, the Coast Guard icebreaker named the "Polar Star" arrived in the McMurdo Sound, smashing through the sea ice (which has been slowly retreating towards McMurdo Station since November) and clearing a way for the one and only resupply vessel that visits McMurdo Station every year. Considering the sea ice will soon start closing up, there's really not much time for large cargo vessels to dock at McMurdo Station to bring supplies into town, and to haul away all of the scientific equipment, samples, trash and, yes, human waste. The vessel is typically in town for 7-10 days, crews operate 24 hours a day to load cargo onto and off of the vessel, and make sure the station has enough supplies for the winter and through most of the following summer. It's a busy time indeed, although most folks around town are not a fan when the vessel docks, because the bars close and you can't buy alcohol on base. The week before becomes a bit like a race for milk before a blizzard... It's incredible to think of the logistics associated with planning a resupply for the entire base, and figuring out how much stuff is necessary to provide for the base for a full year. Very rarely, though, the folks who do the planning can't get everything exactly perfect. For example, it seems like there was a surplus of Mountain Dew on station this year. They had a bunch of signs advertising a "buy one get one free" policy on cases of Mountain Dew, and we started seeing signs like this pop up around station... McMurdo is a weird place, if you haven't gathered from my earlier blog posts. It facilitates some of the world's best science, and almost everything we know about the Antarctic gets supported, in some way or manner, through McMurdo Station. However, it's also stuck in the early 90s in many ways. For example, here is one of the several collections of VHS tapes that can be found throughout the station (in addition to actual working VCRs)... Since our return from the field, the weather and ice conditions have been a bit spotty. Cloudy, snowy, and windy conditions have delayed some flights coming down, as has the condition of the ice runway. In December of each year, they stop flying down the large C-17 cargo planes and switch them out for smaller C-130 cargo planes, which can also land using skis as opposed to wheels. This helps to protect and maintain the runway which, during the peak of the summer, becomes a bit slushy and less stable for wheeled aircraft. It's not until the runway ice becomes stronger that wheeled aircraft can once again land. We hit that transition right around when we returned from the field, so there's been nearly a week of no flights down to the ice as this transition occurs and as the weather keeps even the C-130s from coming down.
I mention all of this because my off-ice date, which was scheduled to be February 6th, was bumped up a few days due to a family situation that requires my attention back home. Some things are more important than science. The US Antarctic Program, NSF, and everyone with the capacity to help me to arrange these new travel plans have been nothing short of amazing. I'm on the next flight off the continent, whenever that might be, and so the runway condition and weather are on the front of my mind at the moment. I'll soon be in New Zealand, the land of better internet, green trees, and true summertime temperatures. I'll be heading straight back to the US, so my internet connectivity and availability will be dictated by my flight schedule, but I'm excited to be able to post more media to this blog once I return, so stay tuned. I'll be posting more shortly!
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Today was our last fully day at Fryxell Camp. Tomorrow, Schuyler and I return to McMurdo to start processing samples, analyzing our data, and preparing our equipment and samples for shipment back to the United States. This process should take a little more than a week before we make our final preparations to leave the ice and head back home. Our field season is officially coming to an end. The end of a field season is always met with mixed emotions, but this is particularly true for this Antarctic field season. It's the first long-duration field campaign where I am the lead investigator, so the brunt of the responsibility and leadership roles falls, to some extent, primarily on my shoulders. That is not meant to say that others on the project are not co-leaders or take on leadership roles - everyone has taken the lead on countless aspects of this work, and they deserve the vast majority of the credit for its success. However, my name is on the papers, on the lab door, and on the US Antarctic Program file as "Fryxell Camp Leader," and so my stress levels have been running hotter than usual for these specific reasons. The final 12 hours of our field season mark an important end to many of these leadership responsibilities, and so I can happily breathe a sigh of relief. If you were to have told me before we left for the field that we would collect as much data as we did, have as many days of productivity as we did, and make as many interesting observations and discoveries as we did, I would have told you that the season would be a remarkable success. As the final days of the season came and went, it's hard to not think of the opportunities that we may have missed and the days where we could have done more. But this is where being a bit retrospective is helpful. This was an amazingly successful field season. I would bet that we now have the most comprehensive and well-documented archive of spectral data ever collected in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and these spectral data are accompanied by a comprehensive suite of biological and ecological measurements as well. The fact that we'll soon be able to correlate spectral measurements made in the field, to key biological and ecological properties, to satellite data collected from orbit, is absolutely mind-boggling. We did it! I'll save a proper summary of our field season for a later post, as it's getting late and I'm more interested in taking a brief walk around camp to stare at the mountains and glaciers one last time before heading back to McMurdo. Here are a few photos from our last few days - there are plenty more to come, especially when I get back to the US and reliable high-speed internet. Enjoy! Making some spectral measurements of microbial mats at the bottom of Lake Fryxell. I'm kneeling on the recently refrozen lake moat ice, which is about ~3 inches thick in this location (see the big chunk removed near the hole for scale). I was mostly just praying that I wasn't going to fall in - not because the water is so cold (right around freezing) or deep (one meter at this location), but because I'm wearing an $80,000 piece of equipment on my back that's not waterproof... Autumn in Taylor Valley (January 23, 2019). By Mark Salvatore Our last week in the field will consist of gathering one last batch of visits to our field sites, where we will acquire one last suite of measurements before departing for McMurdo Station. When we arrived at Fryxell Camp in early December, the Antarctic summer was just starting to ramp up - the lake margin was beginning to thaw out, the streams were beginning to activate, and the microbial mat communities were beginning to "wake up" after their long and cold winter. It's amazing that now, at the end of January, these systems are starting to "shut down" right before our eyes. The lake margin is frozen almost to the shoreline (albeit with very thin ice that cannot really support human weights), the stream flow is noticeably (and measurably) lower than it was even just last week, and we've had more cloudy and snowy days over the past week than we've had for most of the season. If we're not squarely into the Antarctic autumn season yet, we're approaching it fast. That's a weird feeling when the peak "summer" temperatures only reached into the mid-30s. Your body expects the weather to continue to warm, but then you remember that it's Antarctica... As was mentioned in the last post, the composition of the camp continues to change pretty quickly, so that's making for an exciting close to the season. As we approach the official end of the science operations in Taylor Valley (between January 26th and 31st, depending on which field camp you are based out of), teams are shuffling around to different locations to take advantage of camp availability and geographic proximity to their study sites (although, as it's been through the entirety of the season, our group remains at Fryxell Camp for the entirety). A few days ago, we had Jeb depart the camp and head out to the Lake Bonney camp (just a few miles up-valley) to complete his field season. On the same day that Jeb left, Schuyler returned from doing some lab analyses in McMurdo. Two divers, Shawn and James, also joined the Fryxell Camp. They've been diving below the lake ice in all three large lakes in Taylor Valley all season (Lake Fryxell, Lake Hoare, and Lake Bonney), and they're finishing up some end-of-season work out here at Lake Fryxell until the camp closes. Starting today, we should see another major change in camp composition. Sarah (C-507, but who has been with our group since the beginning) will be heading back to McMurdo to officially transition all of her work obligations to C-507 and away from B-235, so we'll certainly miss her out here (although we'll see her in just about a week). Travis with the US Antarctic Program Environmental group will be coming out here for at least one night to assist us with field work while in the Canada Glacier Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA), whenever the Sun decided to peak out from behind the clouds. We've been trying to make measurements in the ASPA since Monday (it's currently Wednesday), but we haven't seen the Sun since Saturday, which makes spectral and orbital measurements particularly difficult. Three other folks from the group of LTER divers are also supposed to make it out to Fryxell Camp today. So, with those changes, our camp population may swell to something like eight or nine people for the final few days, although the schedule for when people come and go always remains in a bit of flux. Today, Wednesday, January 23, 2019, marks the 50th day in the field for our project (B-235-M). I can only imagine that is a record for this year when it comes to number of consecutive nights that a science team has continuously occupied a camp in Taylor Valley. We're still working to organize and characterize all of our data, but the one number that I can absolutely point to is that we've acquired more than 125,000 individual spectra (pre-averaging and downsampling) since our arrival. For a team whose primary goal was to collect spectral measurements for comparison to orbital and biological data, this is a huge amount of work, effort, and success in a challenging environment that often felt like it was out to stop us. I'm really damn proud of the team out here for making everything work, for staying focused and professional every step of the way, and for making 50 days away from my wife, my parents, my extended friends and family, and my dog seem like it was worth it. We can now count on two hands the number of days before we return to McMurdo for lab work and season close-out. Then it's back home (via New Zealand) to start making sense of all of these data!
Our camp continues to change in composition with every week. Yesterday, one of our original B-235 team members, Lee, departed camp for good, as she went back to McMurdo to perform some lab work before heading back to New Zealand this weekend. Schuyler accompanied her back to McMurdo to ensure that the lab work is sufficiently squared away, and she will head back into the field again for the last surge of field work this weekend. So, currently, there are only three of us at the Fryxell Camp: myself, Sarah (who has been in the field for the duration as well), and Jeb.
Looking ahead towards the remainder of the season, it's clear to see that our time in the field is quickly coming to an end. Ideally, our next major camp change will be on Saturday, when Jeb heads out to another nearby lake camp and we get Schuyler back from McMurdo, keeping our camp number at 3 people. Schuyler, Sarah, and I will continue our "normal" efforts for another few days as we finish up some of the primary goals of the project, and then we're expecting to lose Sarah back to McMurdo to begin focusing entirely on her "Wormherder" role for the next few weeks. That might happen on or around Wednesday of this next week. Once Sarah heads out of Fryxell Camp, Schuyler and I will wrap up our spectral observations out here and will start preparing camp to empty out for the remainder of the season, ideally leaving the field early the following week. To prepare for camp close-out, we'll need to make some basic preparations before we leave. This includes making sure that all of our tents are taken down, all barrels are secured and labeled, all of our food is inventoried and stored properly for at least a few weeks, etc. Eventually, the camp manager and folks from McMurdo will come out here to "winterize" the hut and rest of camp, where they close all of the fuel lines and bathrooms, secure and lock all of the lab facilities, shut down the generator, and take down the solar panels. The interior of the hut will reach well into the below freezing temperatures (probably closer to -30 or -40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the middle of the winter, and so any jarred food items must be removed and everything else readied for the rapid approach of Antarctic winter. We certainly aren't responsible for that level of readiness, but we are responsible for making sure that the camp is as clean and as functional as it was when we arrived in early December. I realized that I did a pretty bad job of explaining the whole "Wormherders" thing in my last post, so let me try to supplement here. The LTER group down here is composed of several Principal Investigators, each of whom focuses on a specific aspect of Dry Valleys ecology. The Wormherders consist of two PIs: Jeb Barrett and Byron Adams. Jeb is a soil biogeochemist, while Byron is a soil ecologist with a focus on nematodes, small worms that live in soils all around the world, but are some of the highest members of the food chain down here in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Together, Jeb, Byron, and their research teams are investigating some pretty interesting stuff. Specifically, how do soil microbial populations change as environments change? What happens when the lake margins rise and populations that were once on dry land are now submerged under water? How far can these species migrate over time? Might they be able to adapt to rapid climatic changes like we are beginning to see? These questions (and their answers) are extremely important to a lot of fields, but I'm most interested in things like: What happens when you simplify a soil system and can observe these microbes in their natural environment as the dominant species? If that doesn't scream "astrobiology," I just don't know what does! We're about to head across Lake Fryxell for the day to make a series of spectral measurements and to collect biological samples. While fearful of bringing bad luck, this looks to be the second sunny day in a row that we have out here, which should give us some nice opportunities to collect good data and to supplement our already successful field season. Have a great day, everyone! After a few weeks of laying low in the Fryxell Basin, our small group of four was overrun by seven additional members of the C-507 event, informally known as the "Wormherders." C-507 is a branch of the McMurdo Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) community, a large group who has taken the lead on understanding all aspects of Dry Valleys ecology, from soil science, to microbial communities, to lake and stream behavior, and to meteorology. C-507 is the "soils team," but who could pass up a nickname like the Wormherders??
So, for two days, our small camp of four turned into a large camp of eleven. The original four included one member of C-507 (Sarah) to help us with biological sampling and laboratory analyses, but now the rest of her team came out to conduct some additional experiments. With the new batch were two Principal Investigators (Jeb from Virginia Tech, a biogeochemist and Co-PI on our B-235 project, and Byron from BYU, the "NemaDude" with an expertise in nematodes and soil biology), a Virginia Tech graduate student (Matt), an additional nematode researcher (Topper, from the University of Nebraska), two undergraduate students from BYU (Alyssa and Tasha), and a middle school teacher from Utah (Kevin) down here to assist with the C-507 mission and to improve public engagement in the US Antarctic Program. The soils folks have a very difficult job. Their work requires so much preparation and post-processing in the lab that they don't have the luxury of staying in the field for long periods of time. As much as it might seem like a burden to be "stuck" in a field camp for two months, it sure beats getting "stuck" in McMurdo for two months and having to be completely dependent on whether helos can get you out to the valleys when you need to be there. Anyway, the full C-507 group was only here for two days before they headed back to McMurdo to process the samples they collected. Three additional C-507 team members remained in the field with us (Matt, Kevin, and Jeb), and so our camp number is currently holding steady at seven. The group remained behind to close out an ongoing experiment and to assist us with any of our field analyses, which unfortunately have again been slowed due to weather. It's funny how new folks can change the group dynamics and energy level in camp so quickly. Us original four field members have been in the field nearly continuously since early December, and so the injection of new folks that were excited to get into the field really helped to boost the energy level in the camp. It's also great to talk about different science projects and ideas other than the one that we've been completely obsessed with for the past few weeks. Hearing about these different soils experiments is extremely interesting, and it's really nice to think about new potential collaborations moving forward. It's particularly good to have Jeb in the field. I would argue that Jeb is the reason why our whole project formed in the first place. Back in ~2014, I gave a talk at a conference about the Transantarctic Mountains on using satellite images to look at interesting geologic features. I had one slide on the fact that we can see photosynthetic biology from orbit, and I believe that I mentioned how these photosynthetic signatures were screwing up our ability to study the geology. I think I heard Jeb's jaw drop from across the room. We later got to talking and including his postdoc Eric in the conversation, and the first generation of our research proposal was born ~a year later. Three generations later, and with the inclusion of Lee as an additional Co-PI, the project was funded and here we are. Jeb and I also share the experience of having grown up approximately 10 miles away from each other in northern New Jersey (albeit about a decade apart from each other). We both appreciate good bagels, Italian food, and the Pearl River Hotel. We're soon going to take a picture together and send it to our local newspaper in an effort to make our parents proud. A good friend recently asked me to describe, in detail, a typical day out here at Fryxell Camp and performing the sort of work that we’re doing. I told them no. But, that was because we were had a busy day ahead of us, and that I would be happy to do so soon.
So, yesterday (a fairly typical day for us), I kept track of our entire day. The day’s plan was to get picked up by a helo shortly after 9am for a quick jump across the lake, set down there for approximately 6.5 hours, and then get picked up and brought back to camp just before 4pm. While at the site, we would be collecting spectral measurements and biological samples in a shallow stream channel that has been flowing ever since we made it to the field in early December, so there’s quite a bit of active biological communities in there. While our trip was only a few minutes in the helo, it would save us more than 6 hours of hiking and give us more possible time on the ground to get our work done during ideal lighting conditions.
So that’s a pretty standard day here at camp. Probably lots of details that are pretty boring, but I hope it gives you a sense of camp living. Nothing too spectacular, and lots of little oddities and quirks that I wouldn’t have expected even with my previous Antarctic experience (Homemade pizza for dinner? Really?). Ever have one of those days that starts off normal, but within a few minutes things change pretty dramatically and it takes you for a bit of a spin? That was yesterday. Woke up to cloudy skies (surprise surprise, although we've been having some really nice and clear days in the past week), so our scheduled helo trip across the pond was cancelled. I'm inside the main hut having a cup of coffee and some oatmeal, thinking about what sort of lab measurements or opportunistic field work we could take advantage of today, when all of a sudden we have to make some rather quick adjustments to our day's plans. No details necessary, and no reason to be concerned at the slightest (I promise, there is no reason to be concerned), but 90 minutes later I was back at McMurdo Station, riding in a pickup truck with the radio blaring, and this was after a 45-minute low and fast helo flight over the sea ice. It took only about 60 minutes to sort out what brought us back to McMurdo in the first place, and then came the reality of "here we are, back in 'civilization.'" For one thing, I smelled bad. My last shower was on December 4th of LAST YEAR. Today marks my one month anniversary. Now here I am in McMurdo Station, with people who typically shower much more frequently than that, and I have to play it off as if I'm totally normal. Good luck. Second, the ~750 people currently at McMurdo Station feels like a metropolis. It's weird to hear side conversations after spending four weeks among the same three other people. It's weird to experience darkness in an interior room. But, by far, it's weird to eat a meal at the galley on such short notice! You mean to tell me that somebody cooks for you? You can eat as much as you want? You can have soft-serve ice cream? You can put your dishes in a bin and somebody else will clean them for you? Oh man, sign me up! Fallafel, gyros, rice, pita, and some ice cream for dessert. Not to mention a few cups of coffee! One extremely pleasant surprise was seeing so many familiar faces in the galley. Other scientists who were transitioning in or out of McMurdo, the field center staff, the folks from the environmental department, the folks from the communications department, the helo pilot who swooped us out of the valley just a few hours beforehand... and everyone wants to talk and nobody cares that you smell like you slept in a garbage can. As much as McMurdo Station isn't my favorite place in the world, it sure is full of good people. We landed in McMurdo at 10:20am. We were back on a helo at 3:45pm and back at camp around 4:30pm. One meal fatter, zero showers cleaner, and ~180 additional helo miles under our belt. Thursday was a weird day. Below are a few pictures from our helo back to our field camp at Lake Fryxell. Some low clouds had started to roll into the valleys from the sea ice, making for some pretty nice views. We also passed a large iceberg, sticking approximately 70 m high out of the water, that got stuck in the sea ice several years ago and has been hanging out ever since. Then, once we got into Taylor Valley, we had a great view of our camp and Lake Fryxell under overcast skies. A quick thank you to all of those who assisted in yesterday's jaunt back to McMurdo. Anne, Lindsay, Megan, Donny, Harlan, Andre, and Scoobert, in particular. Alright folks, enjoy some photos! Well, it's been six straight days of overcast skies down here in Taylor Valley, which is not very good news for remote sensing or field spectroscopy. The sort of work that we're trying to do - characterize how sunlight interacts with geologic surfaces and biological materials - requires the ability to carefully characterize the properties of sunlight and how these properties differ after interacting with different materials. This is a difficult task when the Sun is obscured by clouds, as clouds absorb much of the incident sunlight, and whatever is not absorbed is diffusely scattered like crazy in the atmosphere. Needless to say, these are non-ideal conditions for remote sensing work!
While we've been unable to make direct measurements of the surface, we've had lots of luck making opportunistic measurements of different materials in a more controlled laboratory setting. By using our field spectrometer in a dark and well controlled environment, we can make measurements using an artificial light source that supplement the other work that we're doing down here. This is a really great way to make sure that we're staying productive even when the weather is not cooperating. Schuyler has been leading the charge in a lot of these opportunistic measurements, and she's doing a great job characterizing some really important properties related to our remote sensing project. We're really lucky to have her on the team! I've been working on some sample collection, paper writing, abstract revising, image processing, meteorological data analysis, and television show watching (currently nearing the end of Season 1 of The West Wing). We're staying busy, that's for sure! Tomorrow, the two biologists on our team (Lee and Sarah) are scheduled to head back to McMurdo Station to perform some mid-season laboratory analyses. The original plan was for Schuyler and I to also go to assist with this lab work, get a much needed shower, do some laundry, and sleep in an actual bed. However, considering the poor weather recently, Schuyler and I will remain in the field in order to make sure that we can make as many measurements as possible if the weather clears up. Who needs a shower, anyway?? The NAU flag that was posted outside of my tent came down during a particularly windy evening last week, so we found it a new home mounted to the side of our main hut. Us Lumberjacks are officially conquering this valley!! Hope all is well back home, and I hope that you all have a wonderful New Years - I'm definitely sad to be missing the pine cone drop back in Flagstaff. Please send some wishes for some sunny weather down here! It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas! (December 23, 2018). By Mark Salvatore Sunday, December 23, 2018, is the day in which the camps in Taylor Valley are celebrating the Christmas holiday. McMurdo Station has a more extensive celebration on Monday and Tuesday of this week (proper Christmas Eve and Christmas Day), which is when helicopters aren't set to fly and when all of the hard working staff at McMurdo get a well-deserved break from their normal daily activities. The field camps, however, have a bit more of a flexible schedule, which is why we selected Sunday as our day to celebrate. And it's a good thing we did, too, because we woke up this morning to SNOW!!! Christmas at Lake Fryxell will be an intimate celebration. We're anticipating six people in total (the four from our group, and two scientists from a nearby camp who will hike over to join our celebration). We've also planned a random assortment of food items that remind us of holiday celebrations back home - we have stuffing, vegetables (frozen, unfortunately), mashed potatoes, and (the highlight) a 12-pound frozen turkey! I'm taking responsibility for thawing and cooking the turkey today, so wish me luck! I also wanted to provide a quick bit of context regarding where we're camped, what makes it unique, why we can't perform this sort of work anywhere else, and some other details like that. So, if you're more interested in the turkey dinner than in the nerdy geography, geology, and biology of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, now is a good stopping point, and I'll update you all on the turkey dinner in my next post. If you're a dork like me, continue reading below. The McMurdo Dry Valleys are located within the Transantarctic Mountains, the spine-like mountain range that separates East Antarctica from West Antarctica. McMurdo Station (seen in the map above just below the center of the map, highlighted by red text) is located just offshore of the Transantarctic Mountains, and the Dry Valleys are located just to the right of McMurdo Station in the map above in Southern Victoria Land. There are a few reasons why the McMurdo Dry Valleys are a unique environment here on Earth. First, the Dry Valleys span in elevation from ~sea level to ~6,000 feet above sea level. The highest valleys are extremely cold and dry with very little (if any) melting of snow and ice. The lower valleys are more mild (relatively speaking) with melting glaciers, ponds, streams, lakes, and wet sediment that are havens for microbial communities and other microscopic organisms. Second, the valleys lack sophisticated biological communities, and there are no hints of grasses or trees to be found. As a result, the landscape looks alien in nature, consisting solely of rock, sediment, ice, snow, and water. Lastly, the valleys are of great interest to a wide range of scientists, and so the National Science Foundation runs a very efficient and well-organized research program down here through McMurdo Station that supports scientific research and allows nerds like me to investigate topics of interest. Our work is specifically focused around Lake Fryxell, a large lake located in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and is flanked by Canada Glacier to the west and Commonwealth Glacier to the east. Lake Fryxell is just a few miles inland from the Ross Ice Shelf, so there is a significant coastal influence to the soils, the humidity in the air, the regulation of weather and air temperatures, etc. The lake is fed by several small melt channels that transport melting ice from the surrounding glaciers into the lake. The lake itself is also a "closed lake," meaning that there are no channels that drain the lake towards the coast. As a result, any water, sediment, salts, and other nutrients that are dumped into the lake remain in there, where it will either remain as water below the frozen surface, will freeze at or near the surface, or will evaporate away. As additional glacier melting continues to occur (due to rising temperatures), the lake level has been slowly rising in response to these added inputs but consistent and steady outputs. For reference, our camp is located just north of the middle of the lake, along the margin of the major gully channel that drains towards the lake. We are specifically studying the microbial ecology present within these glacial melt streams that feed into Lake Fryxell. We are sampling these communities to understand their biological characteristics through lab measurements (that will be performed both here in McMurdo Station as well as back at Virginia Tech once we return to the states), and we are also using a portable field spectrometer to measure how sunlight interacts with these communities. These spectral data can also be compared to satellite images to relate our local investigations to broader regional assessments of mat distributions and health. In the end, our goal is to be able to collect satellite data of this region and derive important ecological and biological properties by establishing key relationships that can be applied remotely. The dream! Here's a picture of me and my gross field beard checking out some of the microbial communities that we're trying to characterize. These communities form "mats" of microbial materials, which cover parts of the landscape when the ground becomes wet and when the stream channels become active for just a few weeks each year. Once they become active, they start photosynthesizing and converting sunlight into energy and oxygen. The pigments and unique cellular structures associated with this process are readily observable using our spectrometer and satellite images, which is why we are hoping to associate biological properties with the strength of these photosynthetic materials. The hypothesis is that healthier mats are more photosynthetic (creating more energy and oxygen) than less healthy mats. We'll see whether or not our data support this hypothesis once we collect and analyze it all!
The weather hasn't been terribly cooperative these past two weeks. Spectral measurements require full sunny conditions so that we can calibrate our data and compare them to orbital images. Unfortunately (yet understandably), the weather in the Dry Valleys is fairly unpredictable and changes rapidly. This means that we may wake up to sunny skies and be ready to catch a helo to a location of interest, only to be rudely interrupted by a low cloud deck forming over the mountains and rolling into the valley. Then, we're left with a heavy and expensive machine that serves primarily as a pain in our backs as opposed to a highly sophisticated and well calibrated infrared spectrometer. It can get frustrating at times, but this is life in the Dry Valleys! You do what you can when the conditions are both good and bad. I wanted to give a quick preview of what camp living is like here at Lake Fryxell. I hope you enjoy the tour! Here's an overview of the inside of our main hut, which is where most non-sleep-related activities take place. It's heated by a propane heater, although it stays pretty warm through simple solar absorption and having smelly people hanging out inside. The hut is located on a large flat area - the former delta of nearby Huey Creek. Just north of camp, the slope starts to increase as we approach the Asgard Range (you can see Mt. Keohane here in the background). North of the hut is also where we store a lot of our cargo and hazardous materials. Among the things that are visible here are gasoline drums (red), containers for cleaning up hazardous spills (yellow), tri-wall containers for trash and recycling (blue), and empty barrels for urine and/or greywater (more on this in a bit)... We benefit from a lot of modern luxuries in our camp. For example, we have a nearly full kitchen where we can prepare and cook food. The propane-fueled stove acts as any gas range and oven you might expect back at home. We have a portion of the counter dedicated as a coffee station (caffeine is a requirement down here). We have a microwave that we use sparingly (it sucks up energy, which we get from solar power, so there are usually better uses for our power). Whenever we're back at camp, we try to keep some hot water available for tea, coffee, hot cider, or hot chocolate. Large freezers and refrigerators are available to store our food - we typically have ~1 month of food available to us at any given time to save on having to helicopter our food into the field on a regular basis. Also seen in the left photo is our hand washing station. The hut doesn't have any running water - we gather water from the nearby lake and use that for all of our drinking, cooking, and sanitation needs. The hand washing station collects our dirty water, which we then need to dispose of separately. In the Antarctic Treaty, there are statements there about all waste generated in the field, which includes trash, food waste, human waste, and even "greywater," or water that is generally dirty, but still 99% water. We can't just dump this water on the ground because of its contamination, so we must package it separately and ship it out. The treaty also dictates that all waste must be shipped back to its country of origin - for example, our waste needs to go back to the US as opposed to getting dropped off in New Zealand. This is so that countries like New Zealand don't get stuck with the burden of dealing with all of our trash and waste. So, we need to collect all water, put it in barrels, and ship it back to McMurdo Station. When we wash our dishes, we use small bins of water to maximize our efficiency (one with soap, one to rinse, one with a little bleach, etc.). We can then dump this water "down the drain," which drains under the sink, through a strainer to catch any particulates, and into a 5-gallon bucket, which we then empty into a larger 55-gallon drum. The same is done for the water from our hand washing station. The propane heater on the left is our primary means of heating the hut. We also place large pots of water on the heater to "pre-heat" water gathered from the lake for things like the hand and dish washing stations. The stove on the right is primarily used as a back-up heat source. We've yet to use it in our camp. There's a small room that offshoots from our hut that houses all of our communications equipment. We're lucky in our camp to have internet access, which also allows us to have telephones that can connect directly with folks back in McMurdo. When we're away from camp, our primary means of communication is through VHF radio, which is how we chat with helicopters, other science groups, other camps and, if necessary, McMurdo. Most communication is direct line-of-sight, but communications outside of line-of-sight can be done through the help of radio repeaters positioned throughout the Dry Valleys. Lastly, we also have a satellite telephone that we can use to call anywhere in the world. It works pretty well, just ask my wife! Outside of the main hut in two small sheds are our two camp bathrooms. These are not glamorous places, and its use is fairly self-explanatory. Liquid waste drains into a larger 55-gallon drum located outside of the sheds, while solid waste goes directly into a 5-gallon bucket which, when full, is sealed up, sent back to the west coast of the US, and incinerated in its entirety. Glamorous. While you may think that two seats in each bathroom is for dueling poops, that's not the case. One is for solid waste, the other for liquid waste, and only one should be used at a time unless you're really talented. Also located outside of the main hut is our generator shed, which is furthest from the main hut. Power from the three large solar panels routes through this building as well, which is where the storage batteries are charged. When necessary, the generator kicks into action to charge the batteries in the event of cloudy (or nighttime) conditions. On the exterior of the building is also the windsock for the helo pad. This was a calm day - usually the flag is near horizontal, suggesting a wind of at least 15 knots. The last stop on our camp tour is our camp labs. From left to right in this picture, we have our general lab, our electronics lab, our chemical lab, and our radiation lab. They're all heated with small propane heaters, and they're all tied to each other and anchored to the ground. On the other side of the labs is our helo pad, which is pretty expansive compared to other nearby camps. Beyond that is beautiful Lake Fryxell!
If I had to create a listing for this property, it might sound like the following: 0 bed, 2 bath compact lakeside compound. Main building has propane heating, full kitchen (no running water), and two refrigerators (although one is for biological samples only). Four small laboratories. No driveway, although access to an ATV on the frozen lake ice and space for two helos. Price set at $356 million (USAP total annual budget) OBO. |
About the Author(S)The contributors to this blog are the students, faculty, and other researchers in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Northern Arizona University. If you have any suggestions, or would like to contribute to this blog, please email mark.salvatore@nau.edu for more information. Archives
January 2019
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