Answers for Mrs. Radner's fourth grade class

Dear Dr. Sokol:
This is Mrs. Radner's new fourth grade class. Here are some of our questions this year:

1. How do you get your electricity?

Great question! This is something we are constantly grappling with because it takes a lot of power to run the research station. At McMurdo Station, we have diesel generators and wind turbines that provide the energy for a lot of our electricity. We do our best to conserve electricity, but apparently our bill is still pretty high!

McMurdo electric bill!

At the camps in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, we have solar panels. They provide plenty of electricity for our needs there. We only need electricity at the field camps to run computers and charge VHF radios and science equipment. Because it is light out 24 hours a day right now, we don't need to use lights. Also, we use diesel to heat the hut, and we use propane to cook our meals and run the refrigerator

2. How did going to Antarctica change your life?

I could write a book on this! Traveling and doing research here has changed my perspective on life, the type of science I do, and introduced me to many new friends! This place is very different and beautiful and it is amazing to be able to see gigantic deserts and even more gigantic ice sheets in person. It's amazing to me that we can live and work in such a remote and harsh place, and feel perfectly safe. It's amazing to me that I can post to this blog from my tent in the Dry Valleys (if my tent is close to the hut)! Folks here very frequently talk about the great explorers from a century ago (like Scott, Shakleton, and Amundsen) and how amazingly different it must be now from when they were exploring down here. They were struggling to survive. We have the luxury and privilege to focus on science in an amazing and wonderful place!

In addition to that, I have made some great friends in New Zealand that I would never have met otherwise. They taught me a lot about bacteria in Antarctic soils. I have previously worked in streams and wetlands, so studying bacterial diversity in soils is very different for me, and has broadened my perspective about ecology. What is most striking is how seasonal variation in the availability of water is so important in wetlands, streams, and deserts!

3. What sound does a penguin make?

"hhMMua hhmmmuaa hhMMMuuuaaaaahhhhhh"

4. Where do you sleep?

When we're at the McMurdo base we sleep in dorm rooms with beds and blankets and everything! When we're out at field camps we sleep in sleeping bags on two sleeping mats in tents. We need two sleeping mats to insulate us from the cold ground.

5. What animals have you seen and what animals have you seen the most?

A skua in Taylor Valley, Antarctica

We probably see skuas and Weddell seals the most. Skuas look like large seagulls. We saw an emperor penguin on the way to McMurdo from the ice runway when we first got here. The penguin was molting, so he was very still and didn't acknowledge us as we drove by.

There are quite a few mummified seals in the Dry Valleys. This is because the climate is very dry and cold. We saw a freshly dead leopard seal in the Dry Valleys near our camp! This is really cool because this will become a mummified seal over the coming decades. Also, leopard seals are quite rare around here, so it was strange to find a leopard seal in the Dry Valleys. Most of the seal mummies are crabeater seals.

Fresh leopard seal carcass in Taylor Valley near Lake Fryxell camp

6. What happens if there is a fire in Antarctica?

There's a fire department with fire trucks at McMurdo station. Fire is a real threat because it is so dry here. We try to be really careful about fire. Luckily I haven't seen down here. In the field camps, we have plenty of fire extinguishers around to take care of fire, but again, I haven't had to deal with that. Luckily, there aren't very many things that can burn out in the Dry Valley field camps, besides the huts. So our camps could go up in flames, but it's hard to imagine a fire spreading beyond that.

7. What happens if you get frostbite?

We do our best to avoid that. When we first get down here, we have to take safety classes on how to treat cold weather injuries if we get them. For frostbite, I think the best treatment is to get out of the cold, be gentle with the your frostbitten parts, and keep them from freezing again! Once you have recovered from frostbite, that area is more sensitive to the cold.

8. When you got there, what was the first thing you did?

I took lots and lots of pictures! Then hopped on Ivan the Terra Bus and got a ride to McMurdo station where we had an orientation meeting.

9. Is it fun being a scientist, especially in Antarctica?

I absolutely love being a scientist in Antarctica! I love ecology, in general, because I like being able to use math to understand the natural world. I also love traveling and hiking and being outside and camping in new and beautiful places. Antarctica is extremely strange and beautiful, so to me, it is the best place in the world to be an ecologist! I get to explore and puzzle over the ecosystem I am wandering through.

10. How long did it take you to get from Virginia to McMurdo Station?

I actually left from Detroit this year because I was visiting my family for the holiday. I think I left Detroit around 9AM on December 27, 2013. Then flew to Los Angeles, and then flew to Auckland, New Zealand. I arrived in New Zealand on December 29th at 6AM (New Zealand time, which is 18 hours ahead of you). Then I flew to Christchurch, NZ and arrived around noon. Then we spent a few days in Christchurch getting our field gear, and also our flight was delayed because the plane from New Zealand to Antarctica had mechanical issues. Once we finally took off for Antarctica, it was around an 8 hour flight. I think we left around 1 or 2PM and landed on the ice runway in McMurdo around 10PM. We then had a 45 minute ride on Ivan the Terra Bus to McMurdo Station from the ice runway. By this point I would have totally lost track of what day it was, except it was New Years Day, so I finally arrived around 11PM on January 1, 2014 (which would have been 5AM on January 1, 2014 in Michigan). So... about 4 days and 19 hours.

11. What is the hardest thing you experienced in Antarctica?

Probably traveling to Antarctica is the most difficult part. I was pretty exhausted and disoriented by the time I was done traveling.

12. We saw pictures of you building a wall of ice around your tents. How long did it take to build that wall, and how long did the wall last? Did you destroy the wall or did you leave it up?

It didn't take too long to build the ice wall. We had a group of people working to cut out snow blocks and a group of people who were stacking the blocks. The wall lasted through the night, which was the important part. We left it up because we had built it on a location on the ice shelf where they always do the field survival training class. The snow and ice is constantly changing and blowing around so they don't last too long.

13. What's the coldest the temperature has ever been when you were there, and what's the warmest the temperature has been?

The coldest I experienced was probably my first season in 2010 when I was at a deep field camp down by the Beardmore Glacier. We had a windstorm where the windchill was -80 F. Usually, the coldest temperatures I experience here during the austral summer are just below 0 F. The warmest are probably around 40 F.

14. You mentioned that when you were in the Dry Valleys, you did not have a chance to wash your clothes. How do you wash them in McMurdo?

We have normal laundry machines in the dorms at McMurdo station.

15. What kind of techonology works in Antarctica: cell phones? computers? laptops? tablets?

People have all of those types of devices down here, however, there are no cell towers so cell phones cannot receive calls normally. We do have an internet connection (obviously, since I'm posting to a blog), but our bandwidth is restricted because it is a satellite connection shared by everyone on base. So we have a normal internet connection, but it is pretty slow, like dial-up connections in the 1990s (ask your parents what that was like!). I do bring my phone down here because I can use it to take pictures and listen to music. It makes a great backup camera.

16. Why is the research that you are doing have to be done in Antarctica?

This is probably the most important question! There quite a few reasons we come to the McMurdo Dry Valleys to study ecology. First, ecosystems near the poles (the arctic in the north and the antarctic in the south) are the most sensitive to global climate change. So we anticipate that we will see changes here first. We already have seen some changes. When comparing lake levels to 100 years ago, they have gone up substantially.

However, there is evidence that humans are influencing the polar climate in many conflicting ways, and this is what a lot of scientists are studying. The Dry Valley ecosystems are influenced by the hole in the ozone layer (a layer of gas in the atmosphere that protects us from UV radiation from the sun), changes in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and we anticipate changes in the climate associated with a warmer planet, such as more snow and more melt-water from the glaciers. We are trying to understand how the ecosystem works now, so that we can predict how it will change. As we collect data over the coming years, we will find out if our scientific hypotheses are right. Inevitably, we will be wrong about things, but it is important to collect data to figure what we are wrong about. As we learn and collect data, we will have a better and better understanding about how this ecosystem works.

The Dry Valleys are an especially interesting place to study ecology because the ecosystems here are relatively simple, so when a change occurs, it is easier to interpret how the ecosystem changes. It turns out that plants make chemistry and biodiversity patterns really complicated to understand, and we don't have plants here! For example, we can see really interesting patterns in diatoms and cyanobacteria, and understand how changes in the growth of cyanobacteria and diatoms affects the Carbon cycle here in the Dry Valleys. In other ecosystems, plants would dominate the carbon cycle.

Lastly, the soils are very cold and dry, which is a really good environment for preserving DNA. A lot of our work revolves around extracting DNA from soils to understand the types of bacteria that live in the soil. Because there are no plants and very few animals here, we think that changes in bacterial diversity will reflect what is happening in the environment. Similar studies in places with lots of plants and animals are difficult because the plants and animals can have a really strong influence over bacterial biodiversity.

You can go to the McMurdo LTER page for more about the science we do here.

We will be reading more of your blogs and looking at more of your pictures. Thank you for spending your time answering our questions. Have a good time in Antarctica.Mrs. Radner's class 2013-2014

Thanks so much for all the great questions!