Answers for Tim Gray

Dear Dr. Sokol,
My name is Tim Gray and Im writing form Maplewood New Jersey. My biology class was encouraged to check out your blog and it is very helpful in explaining what you and your colleagues are doing. If you dont mind I have a few questions for you:
1. It seems like and your colleagues all have different interests in what to be studying in Anartica. How do all of your research fields overlap?
2. Does the climate change have a huge effect on the glaciers, and if so how does it effect your research?
What about the McCurdo Dry Valley make it so ideal for your research.
Thank you for your time
Tim

Hi Tim,
Great questions! These are questions we are grappling with right now because the National Science Foundation, which is the government agency that pays for our science, is going to be reviewing our work this season. Jeb and I work with many colleagues at a Long Term Ecological Research site in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, so a common thread among all of us is our effort understand how the biota and the environment are connected, and how they will change as the climate changes. Some scientists focus on nutrients in the soil or water, others study glaciers, and many study the biota that live in the soils, streams, and lakes, others study geology.

It is important for the ecologists to know about the geology because the microscopic life that we study now is very strongly linked to the history of the valley. In Taylor Valley, where we do a lot of our work, there used to be an ancient lake (20,000 years ago) called Lake Washburn. You can still see the "bathtub" rings up high on the mountains from where the lake surface used to be. Because the Dry Valleys are so well preserved, the ancient lake sediment and the remains from diatoms and cyanobacteria that used to live in this ancient lake are still influencing the chemistry and biology of the soil to this day!

So what happened to ancient Lake Washburn? To understand why the lake was there, and why it's now gone, we need to understand the glaciers. A huge wall of ice (the West Antarctic Ice Sheet) from the other side of the continent used to block the mouth of Taylor Valley. Yes, Antarctica used to have more ice than it does now! When the ice sheet receded out of Taylor Valley, the lake levels dropped. We still have lakes in the Valleys, but they are much smaller now.

Historical (natural) climate change has had an enormous influence over the landscape, and I think we have a pretty good grasp of the natural processes that have shaped the landscape in the Dry Valleys. One of the major hypotheses that we are working on now is that everything will become more connected as we see increased melt water running through the landscape as the climate changes in response to humans (i.e., releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere).

This is an important place to do research for a number of reasons. First, the poles of the planet tend to have the most pristine and most sensitive ecosystems. The arctic has already demonstrated this, and we think when the Antarctic changes it will change fast. Because the system is so pristine and well preserved, we have a better record here about the history of the climate and geology. Also, the system relatively simple, so we may be able to more directly associate changes in ecology with changes in climate. Lastly, the Dry Valleys ecosystem is really interesting! The Lakes are link no lakes found anywhere else on earth! They are covered in ice year round. The soils are shaped by thousands to millions of years of wind (no water at all!), and the top of the food web is a nematode! This is just a really unique and interesting place for an ecologist.