Hello from the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica!

Howdy folks!

I am writing to you from a small field camp in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the largest ice free area in Antarctica. I am here to monitor glacial melt streams that only flow for a short time each year.

My tent at our field camp. Our camp is called 'F6' and is named after the stream that is adjacent to camp. Here we have a small hut where we cook, eat, and do lab work, however, we otherwise sleep in tents. People think it sounds harsh to sleep in tents in Antarctica, but the tents can stay rather warm and I like it! 

Glaciers flowing into Taylor Valley from the Kukri Hills. The Sollas Glacier is on the left and the Hughes Glacier is on the Right. These are alpine glaciers, which are formed by snow that accumulates in the mountains and turns into ice that flows into the valleys. You can think of glaciers as slow moving rivers of ice. 

The streams that we monitor flow from 4-12 weeks during the austral (southern) summer when temperatures hover around freezing (32 deg Fahrenheit) and energy from the sun starts to melt the glaciers.

An early season melt pulse on Canada Stream started to channelize the snow that was overlying the stream bed. This image was taken shorty after the stream 'turned on' -- when glacial meltwater begins to fill the dry (or snow-covered) stream channel. Eventually all this snow will melt away as the water carries thermal energy (heat) through the channel. 

My job is to monitor the chemical, physical, and biological components of the streams.  This involves collecting water samples for chemical analysis; measuring water temperature, conductivity (concentration of salts, or ions, in the water), and discharge (amount of water moving through the stream channels); and sampling the bacteria and algae that grow on the rocks of the stream beds and ponds.

Desiccated microbial mats (bacteria and algae) situated around a frozen pond, at the foreground. This image was taken early in the season before melt. Once the glaciers melt, water will fill this pond and the microbes will start to photosynthesize by using the energy from sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into sugars (plant energy) and oxygen!

I love doing this type of field work and hope to share what I do with you! If you have questions, please ask! I look forward to responding to your questions.

Best,
Josh

Questions from South Lyon 6th Grade from 12 Jan 2017

We received lots of great questions from the 6th Grade class in South Lyon, MI. Our field team is camped out in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and they were able to take some time to answer some of the questions:

Hello! We are a sixth grade science class from South Lyon, Michigan. We are beginning a unit on geology and have some questions about your work in Antarctica!

Where do you stay in Antarctica? Where do you sleep?

In the dry valleys we stay at field camps. The camps typically have a small hut with space to cook and eat in addition to lab space. The huts are too small to sleep in, so we sleep in tents.

The F6 hut with our tents, located in the Fryxell Basin.

What do you eat? Where do you get food and water?

The food we eat is similar to what you eat, but with less fresh produce. A lot of our food is frozen or canned. We eat things like mac n cheese, enchiladas, potatoes, steak, frozen vegetables, rice, beans, sardines, etc. On occasion, however, we are gifted fresh fruit from McMurdo Station -- this is a treat.

Inside the hut at F6 camp.

What kinds of tests do you conduct?

In streams we perform basic in-field tests to measure the electrical conductivity, pH, and temperature of the water. Upon returning to the hut, after visiting streams, we process samples by filtering water for further analysis of the anions and cations, nutrients, and dissolved organic matter. The filtered samples are then sent to the established laboratory at McMurdo Station to be processed and analyzed.

What types of animals are around you every day? Does your work help save any animals?

It’s rare to see animals around the dry valleys. Although on occasion, penguins and seals sometimes get lost and wander west into the dry valleys, subjected to an ill fate. In the cold and dry climate, the seals become mummified and preserved for thousands of years. The penguins, however, quickly get picked apart by the Skuas (seabirds). Also there are micro-animals, like Tardigrades.

A mummified seal situated near the F6 camp.

A lost penguin playing in a brine patch below Blood Falls on the west lobe of Lake Bonney.

Have you seen any Polar Bears?

No Polar Bears here - they’re up in the Arctic (north). But there are Water Bears, or Tardigrades, a resilient micro-animal, which are about 1 mm long and inhabit the soils, streams, and lakes around the dry valleys.

A Water Bear, or Tardigrade, harvested from Von Guerard Stream, under the microscope at 40x.

Tardigrade reaching for a colony of cyanobacteira. Viewed at 10x. Sample harvested for Von Guerard Stream.

How did you get to Antarctica and how will you get home? If you traveled by plane, is your plane still there and is it frozen?

From the United States we first flew to Christchurch, New Zealand. From Christchurch, we boarded a U.S. Air Force aircraft enroute to Antarctica. After the plane landed, we got off while others boarded for a return trip to Christchurch. Throughout the austral summer, airplanes make many trips to and from Antarctica, carrying people and equipment. During cold and dark winters, it is more likely for planes to become frozen to the ice during their landings.

How do you not get frostbite?

When it’s chilly we bundle up with hats, mittens, and jackets to keep us warm. But it’s summer here, so the temperature can often be higher here than it is in Michigan on the same day (into the 40s deg F)!

Have you seen any other people there?

Yes! There are many field camps around the dry valleys, and from time to time we meet other scientists stationed at these camps. The New Zealand Antarctic program has a good representation at several of the other camps. It’s always nice to meet other people in the remote region. 

What is the coldest temperature that it gets to be while you are there? What is the warmest temperature?

Summer temperatures are fairly tolerable and typically hover around freezing, 0 deg C, or 32 deg F. The wind chill, however, can make it feel much cooler. The warmest temperature I’ve experienced this season was 1 or 2 deg C. The coldest day was early in the season where the temperature dropped to about -17 deg C.

What kind of trees are there in Antarctica? Do you even have any?

Trees are absent from the Antarctic. In the dry valleys there are no flowering plants, however on the western Antarctic Peninsula there are two species of plants.

Do glaciers have layers?

Glaciers are formed by the accumulation of snow over time. The snow that remains after a season of melt becomes very dense and formed into granular ice, this is called firn. Over time, the firn is compressed and buried as more snow accumulates. As layers of firn are compressed and buried, they become fused to the glacier to form a thickened mass of ice. So, in a sense, yes, glaciers have layers; layers of firn, which add to overall glacier mass as they become compressed.

Lower area of Canada Glacier with supraglacial melt channels.

What is the difference between being and geologist and a biologist?

The root word ‘geo’ means earth. The root word ‘bio’ means life. I would say, geologists study earth and biologists study life. However, the terms are not exclusive. For example, some geologists study the remnants of ancient life preserved in fossils.

Are there volcanoes in Antarctica?

Indeed, there are volcanoes in Antarctica and many are active. Mt. Erebus (pictured) is the world’s southernmost active volcano and visible from McMurdo Station.

Mt. Erebus (Eric's photo from a past field season)

How come you use ATV’s to cross frozen lakes?

We use ATVs as a convenient way to cross Lake Fryxell, which is approx. 3 miles long. Further, it’s nice for carrying heavy equipment to sample sites, and it’s nice for lazy people.

Commonwealth Glacier (background) and our ATV tracks on the snow covered Lake Fryxell. We use ATVs to travel across ice covered lakes and visit streams around the basins.

How long is the sun visible?

In mid-summer, and during cloudless days, we can see the sun 24 hours. The sun starts to rise in late August and starts to set in May.

Greetings from the Antarctic Dry Valleys! (from Josh Darling)

Hi Folks,

Greetings from the Antarctic Dry Valleys.

The East lobe of Lake Bonney, looking east down the Taylor Valley from above the Bonney Reigel. The Hughes and Sollas Glaciers flow north into the Valley from the Kukri Hills.

Recently the Stream Team has been busy monitoring glacial melt water streams around the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

Angela Zoumplis collects water samples from Garwood Stream just below Lake Colleen in the Garwood Valley.

Our job is to monitor stream discharge, which is the amount of water flowing through stream channels, in addition to the chemistry and biology of the streams.

Control on F3, where we measure stream flow on Lost Seal Stream in Taylor Valley

Due to considerable snowfall in November, we have had a late start to collecting discharge data for this season's flow period.

F21, Upper Von Guerard Stream in Taylor Valley

Typically, the flow period coincides with warmer summer temperatures and will span from mid-November through until mid-February. This season, however, many streams did not begin to flow until early to mid-December. We are finally happy to be hiking and flying around to visit the approximately 30 streams we monitor.

Adams Glacier with the orange Adams Stream gage box in the Miers Valley. Oh, and a helicopter.

Some green and orange colored microbial mats adhered to rocks in Canada Stream, which flows into the Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley.

Angela Zoumplis collects microbial mat samples from Canada Stream in the Lake Fryxell basin.

Commonwealth Glacier (background) and our ATV tracks on the snow covered Lake Fryxell. We use ATVs to travel across ice covered lakes and visit streams around the basins.

We look forward to hearing from you soon. Post questions and comments here, and we will respond as soon as possible.

- Josh, Stream Team, C506.

The 2016-2017 field season is beginning!

It's beginning. Scientists from the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (http://mcm.lternet.edu/) program are beginning to travel to Christchurch, New Zealand, and then on to McMurdo Station on Ross Island in Antarctica. They will be working hard to collect data about the amazing and mysterious ecosystem in the McMurdo Dry Valleys--possibly the driest ecosystem on earth. The typical field season for ecologists and environmental scientists working in Antarctica spans the austral "spring" and "summer", from now to about February.

I have been to the dry valleys five times, but I'm not going this year. However, I will be coordinating with some of my colleagues so that they can answer questions and post updates from the field. I will also write posts--since I'll have more regular internet access then the scientists in the field--and answer questions based on my past experiences from time to time.

Pictures from Taylor Valley from my last field season are posted below.

Face of the Commonwealth Glacier in Taylor Valley, Antarctica

Headwaters of Aiken stream, which flows into Many Glaciers Pond, in Taylor Valley, Antarctica. The Commonwealth Glacier is in the background.

The Ross Sea in Antarctica is now officially a marine sancturary!

This is great news!

See a story on the new marine sanctuary on npr here: link

McMurdo Station, the main hub of U.S. research activity in Antarctica is located on Ross Island, which is in the Ross Sea. While the Ross Sea is remote, there is still significant fishing and whaling pressure that is affecting the marine ecosystem. My understanding is that these activities violate the Antarctic Treaty, or at least the spirit of the treaty. However, the fishing boats are often from countries that have not signed onto the treaty, or the fisherman may be rogue actors in a remote area that is just really hard to police.

What are the consequences of the Ross Sea being designated a marine sanctuary? Now some of the countries where Antarctic fisherman have been coming from have endorsed the marine sanctuary, maybe their governments are recognizing the value of conservation of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Further, these countries (e.g., China) are investing more in Antarctic research at the national level, which seems to indicate that their governments are indeed buying into the value of Antarctic science. I sure hope this is the case! It is always great to see our science colleagues from other countries getting more support from their national programs.

Questions from members of a Second Grade Classroom in Troy, Michigan!

I've got lots of great questions from members of a Second Grade Classroom in Troy, Michigan!

Anhad..."On silde 20 of 64, Is there a sticker on a rock?"

I think what you're looking at is a lens flare, which is an effect that sometimes occurs in photos when the light hits your camera lens a certain way. In this case, I think it was because it was so sunny that day.

Ronald..."How much snow do you get in Antarctica?"

The McMurdo Dry Valleys, where I do most of my research, get a very small amount of snow. Here is a picture of snow packs in Taylor Valley, which are present during the Austral summer.

Snow patches in the Taylor Valley, Antarctica

The Dry Valleys do get snowstorms. However, it's so dry that the snow will sublimate (evaporate) very quickly. We had a storm while I was at a field camp, but the snow had evaporated by the following day.

Summertime snow on my tent at F6 camp in Taylor Valley

Snow collected during a summertime storm at McMurdo Station, Antarctica

Addsion..."How cold does it get in Antarctica?"

The average temperature in the Dry Valleys is around -13 C, where C stands for centigrade, and 0 C is the temperature at which water freezes. During the summer, the air temperatures can get as warm as 10 C, and during the winter, the air temperatures can as cold -60 C.

Alyssa..."Why does the plane have skis and not wheels?"

Most of Antarctica is covered in snow and ice, so planes with skis are much more useful because they can land on snow and ice. At McMurdo, planes land on the Ross Ice Shelf, which is a glacier on top of the sea. The planes with skis can also land on top of the Antarctic Ice Sheet at the South Pole, and on snow and ice fields near other deep field camps and other research stations. The wheeled aircraft, on the other hand, can only land on specially prepared ice-runways. As far as I know, the only such runway exists at McMurdo station, and it is only used when the weather is cold enough to keep the ice frozen solid -- which is not the case during the summer months.

Madden..."How did the ice glaciers form?"

Great question! I think that is one of the major questions glaciologists are studying. My basic understanding is that as snow accumulates, over many thousands of years, it is compressed into ice. Some of the ice on the Antarctic Ice Sheet is hundreds of thousands of years old! You can think of the glaciers as really slow moving, frozen rivers. The ice is constantly moving downhill, although too slow for us to see in real time.

Ariela..."How long was your trip from your home to Antarctica?"

My trip home takes about 3 days. It's about an 8.5 hour flight from Antarctica to New Zealand, and then about 30 hours of travel and layovers at airports to get from New Zealand back home.

Dean..."Why are the rocks different colors?"

The different colors arise from the different processes that created the rocks. There are lots of rocks that are of volcanic origin in the Dry Valleys, and those create lots of the dark streaks in the landscape. Rocks with a lot of iron tend to be reddish, like rust.

Dominick..."How many avalanches have been in Antarctica?"

I have no idea, but probably a lot. I've seen one, when a glacier behind one of our field camps calved.

Audrey..."What does F6 mean?"

The streams that flow into Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley are numbered, so that researchers can keep them straight in the notes. The stream nearest Canada Glacier is number one (stream F1, or Fryxell stream #1). The sixth stream is F6, and the camp located where that stream flows into Lake Fryxell is F6 camp. The streams all have other names as well. For example, stream F1 is also known as Canada Stream, and stream F6 is also known as Von Guerard Stream.

Will..."What are you doing now on January 27, 2015?"

Now I'm back at McMurdo Station. Instead of camping at a field camp and collecting samples, I'm staying in a dorm and working in the lab at McMurdo to analyze the soil samples I collected. Our group of researchers looks for microorganisms in the soils and we also measure soil chemistry.

James..."How tall are the mountains in Antarctica?"

Pretty tall. Mount Erebus, which is the southernmost active volcano, is about 12,500 ft.

Harish..."How many valleys did you see total?

This year I've been to two. I've been to 8 over the past 5 years.

Jaden..."Why is there dirt in the snow?"

Lots of different reasons. Glaciers pick up dirt and rocks as they slowly scrape away at the ground underneath. Also, this is a very windy place, and wind blows dust on top of the snow and ice.

Emily..."What kinds of rocks changed color?"

I don't know of any that change color, but I'm not a geologist.

Julia...On picture 46 of 64, Is that a volcano?"

Good question. That particular mountain is not a volcano. It's just shrouded in clouds and I took a picture because I thought it looked cool. However, Mt. Erebus is a volcano and it is right behind McMurdo Station!

Mt. Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica with steam rising out of the caldera at the top.

Jeremiah and Prisha..."Why are there so many rocks/stones?"

Liquid water, plants, and animals contribute a lot to the weathering and decomposition of rocks, which creates soil, in more temperate parts of the world. Because the Dry Valleys are very dry, and there are not plants, and biological processes occur very slowly, rocks and gravel dominate the landscape.

Jenna..."How big are the rocks in centimeters?"

From less than 1 to greater than 1,000,000

Ivan..."Is there gold or diamonds in Antarctica?"

I don't know, but I bet folks are looking.

Sameer, Lillian and Xavier..."Why can't someone drive the ATV on soil?"

It took many thousands, if not millions of years for many of the features in the Dry Valleys to form. The ATVs leave tracks in the soil, and we want to minimize our impact on this pristine landscape. The ice around the edge of the lakes melts and reforms every year, so any tracks we leave with the ATV disappear each year.

Nolan..."What are the camp buildings made out of?"

Some are made of wood. Some are rack Tents or similar structures that have wood frames with canvas stretched over them.

Prisha..."Why is the Canada Glacier so big?"

Canada Glacier is actually a fairly small glacier for Antarctica. It is considered an "alpine glacier" which is hanging off one of the mountains into Taylor Valley. The glaciers that run from the interior of the Antarctic continent to the ocean are thousands of times bigger. There is a lot of ice down here!

Vukadin..."What is in the soil that you picked up with the spoon?"

We collect those samples to look for cyanobacterial mats, which are a kind of photosynthetic bacteria that live in colonies. Cyanobacteria, diatoms, and mosses are some of the main primary producers in the Dry Valley ecosystem.

Anhad..."On picture 46 of 64, is that an avalanche?"

That is not an avalanche, though it kind of looks like it. It's clouds that accumulated around a mountain. In the foreground, that is the Canada Glacier.

Madden..."Why is the water by the glacier not frozen?"

Good question. The radiation from the sun causes the glacier to melt, so that water is melt water running off the glacier. The glaciers are so big and so cold that the loss of melt water doesn't really changer their size. However, if the climate warms, this could change. For example, in North America, glaciers in Glacier National Park are melting away.

Emily..."What are the minerals that Kevin is holding?"

 I'm not sure what picture you're talking about, but I think I have pictures of him holding everything from algal mats to basalt (volcanic) rocks.

Sai..."What's the tempearture?"

Right now it's around 0 C

Dominick..."How did some of the snow melt?"

Even if the air temperature does not get above freezing, radiation from sunlight can heat up the snow and cause it to melt. Although, it does get above freezing here in the summer. So that can cause snow to melt too.

Audrey..."Why does Antarctica have so much snow?"

I don't think it snows all that much here. I think it's more an issue of the fact that it's so cold here year round, and the snow never has a chance to melt. The snow and ice that we see covering Antarctica has accumulated over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. The exception is the Dry Valleys, which see very little precipitation, mountains stop ice from flowing in off the ice sheet, and the air is so dry that the little bit of snow that does fall each year immediately evaporates.

Alyssa..."What are some of the different animals in the water besides the sea spider?"

The sea spider that I took a picture of was in one of the aquariums in the lab at McMurdo. Those animals are from marine (saltwater/ocean) habitats. We don't find any of those things in the lakes in the Dry Valleys. There are lots of different types of animals in the Ross Sea around McMurdo, from sea stars to isopods and amphipods to eel pouts and other types of fish. And then, of course, there are also Orca and Minke Whales, Weddell seals, and Adele and Emperor penguins.

James..."What other penguins are there in Antarctica besides the Adelli Penguin?"

Around McMurdo, the only other penguins are the Emperor penguins.

Thanks for all the great questions!

Fish under the ice...

Some of our colleagues with the WISSARD project drilled through hundreds of meters of ice on the Ross Ice Shelf and found life! Many of the biologists on this project also do really interesting work to understand the microbial life that lives under the ice in the lakes in the Dry Valleys.

Read about the story here:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=133895&org=NSF&from=news

Some pictures from the beginning of the 2014-2015 field season...

Trying on the Extreme Cold Weather Gear

We fly from New Zealand to McMurdo Antarctica on a LC130 with skis!

Almost there...

Landed at Pegasus Airfield on the Ross Ice Shelf near Ross Island, Antarctica.

McMurdo Station holds an annual concert called Ice Stock to celebrate New Year's Eve.

Our team planning the field season...

I don't have pictures from field work yet... but here are some soils we collected. We're analyzing soil chemistry here, including pH and nutrient contents.

Jess is washing our glassware for more analyses.

Ashley is counting nematodes in the soil.

Ruth is measuring soil pH and electrical conductivity.

Question from Dan Bryant:

As a current college student, how does one get in contact or find the "path" to conduct research in Antarctica?

Hi Dan,
Great question. I highly recommend getting involved in undergraduate research. At my school there was a program called the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program that listed which professors in the Biology Department were looking students to work in their lab. At some institutions there are professors that are looking for students to work with them as research assistants in Antarctica.

Even if there are not professors who do Antarctic research at your school, I would still recommennd undergraduate research. You won't necessarily start off getting to go to remote field sites, but undergraduate research can help you get your foot in the door. My undergraduate research involved identifying and counting aquatic insects from streams in Venezuela. I didn't get to go to South America, but I learned a great deal about freshwater ecology from working in that lab, and I got to help out with field work around southeastern Michigan. I found that I really loved field ecology, and the professor I worked for recommended me for a job doing field work in Alaska, which was awesome. Eventually, I went to graduate school for ecology and met a Professor who was doing research in ecology got a proposal funded to work as a postdoctoral researcher in Antarctica.

If you don't make it to Antarctica as an undergraduate, there are opportunities to do graduate research here. If you're interested in ecology or environmental sciences, there are a number of professors involved with the Long Term Ecological Research program at McMurdo who conduct research and advise graduate students who do research in the Dry Valleys and beyond. I recommend finding professors who study topics that you find fascinating and contacting them about graduate school.

Welcome to the 2014-2015 field season!

Hi folks,

I'm at the airport and ready to make a rather long and winding journey, via Sydney, to Christchurch, New Zealand, and eventually on to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. I'm looking forward to getting this travel over with and getting the field season started. We're doing some really exciting science this year, which I will write about in more detail later.

I look forward to hearing from you. Please post questions and comments over in the "Questions" tab (CLICK HERE). Then I will post answers on the main page.

Answers for Jacob Madonna

Dear Dr. Sokol
I'm an AP Biology student from Maplewood New Jersey. I'm in the same class as Jonah, Chris, Emma, Sarah, and Tim . I've been following your blog for the past month and i have a couple questions to ask you
1) You've been going to Antarctica for a couple years now. How do you set yourself goals regarding your research?

Hi Jacob,
Great questions! Setting goals for research in Antarctica is generally pretty easy because we have to have a fairly specific research plan outlined to get funded to do research down there in the first place.

It seems that for our research group, we have a wish-list of goals and a realistic-list of goals. Usually the wish-list involves collecting many more samples from many more sites than is practical.

For my first project, our goal was to conduct a fairly extensive survey of soil biodiversity across an 800 km stretch of the Transantarctic Mountians. This involved planning travel by helicopter to a bunch of different field sites. We had a pretty simple, but specific soil sampling field protocol that we followed at all every site, so that made field work pretty simple. The tricky part was getting to all the sites. We prioritized a list of sites that we really really wanted to go to, and a list of sites that we would like to go to if weather allowed and we had enough time. I think we ended up getting a variety of samples that represent the soil bacterial diversity in the Transantarctic Mountains pretty well.

For the past three years, I have been working with the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) group. The main goal of this group is to maintain a long-term record of the ecology of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and also conduct long-term field experiments so that we can understand ecological responses that occur over fairly long time scales (e.g., decades). The McMurdo LTER has been running for a long time (20+ years), so a lot of the work I do with the LTER is continuing to collect samples to continue the long term record of the geochemistry and biodiversity of soils in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

2) How does climate change directly affect your research with microscopic organisms? 

This is a question that we are currently trying to answer, but probably won't have an answer for a while. We think that in the coming decades climate change will increase glacial melt, and thus increase the presence of liquid water in the Dry Valleys during the austral summer. We think this will affect the ecology of the Dry Valleys, but we're not exactly sure how. One of the broad hypotheses of the McMurdo LTER project is that there will be increased "connectivity among landscape units." For example, we think increased melt from the glaciers will increase the amount of water that percolates though the soil, mobilizing nutrients and micro-organisms in the soils.

The frequency of melt events and amount of melt water will have consequences for the types of organisms that dominate the stream channels and adjacent soils in the wetted margins. For example, past studies have shown that a shift in water availability in a stream channel can lead to a shift in the species composition of the diatom community. There tend to be more endemic, cold-adapted diatom species in cold, dry stream channels that only see liquid water periodically (not every year). We think these types of streams may be very sensitive to the anticipated increase in glacial melt.

3) Have you ever had to change the way you approached an experiment or research topic because of Antarctica's extreme climate

We try to keep our field work simple to avoid complications due to the extreme climate. Most of the field work I'm involved in just requires collecting ecological samples. We normally store samples by freezing them, so Antarctica is actually quite helpful in that we don't always need to worry about bringing coolers and ice out in the field with us.

The extreme climate does affect our access to field sites or ability to collect samples. That is, sometimes we have to sit and wait for winds to die down or fog to clear before we can get a helicopter ride to or from a field site. Sometimes it is too cold to collect water, or sometimes we can't collect a soil sample at a particular location because it is frozen solid in ice.

This season, extreme weather has prevented us from being able to ship our science samples from McMurdo back to the US. There is a large cargo vessel that visits McMurdo each year at the end of the season. At the end of each season most of our science samples are loaded onto this vessel and they are shipped back to the US. However, an extreme windstorm hit McMurdo as they were loading the vessel this year, and the boat had to leave before all of our science samples were loaded onto it. These types of situations happen when you work in an extreme place. Luckily for us, I think most of the our samples will be fine in a freezer for a year... we'll just have to wait.

Answers for Jonah Williams

Dear Dr. Sokol,
It has been really fascinating to read about the research that you and your team are currently conducting in Antarctica. As a strong activist in the climate change world, I am very glad to see that you have been having success compiling all your work, and that your research will provide valuable information on climate change patterns in the antarctic. I recently finished some research on carbon sequestration in photoplankton and microalgae, and the quantification and change in biomass due to ocean warming patterns.
My question for you relates the the biotechnological procedures you are using to observe these microscopic organism you are studying.
1. What types of procedures are you using to manipulate the DNA in certain organisms you study to make it easier to view. (PCR? Plasmid vectors?)

Hi Jonah,
It sounds like you are doing some interesting work. I'm not a molecular or microbiologist, so in the projects that I have mainly been working on we are not manipulating DNA. Our objective has been to conduct a relatively broad survey of the diversity and types of microbes living in arid soils in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Some of our collaborators at the University of Waikato in New Zealand have worked with MoBio to develop a protocol to extract DNA from soil samples with very low microbial biomass. We then run PCRs on the environmental DNA using general primer sets that target broad groups. For example, we used a primer that targeted a conservative region of 16S rDNA, which targets bacteria generally. If you are interested, you can email me and I can send you some citations, or you can find our recent paper here. The published data set is just fingerprinting based off of tRFLP, so our most recent publication is about diversity patterns over very broad spatial scales. We have sequenced a subset of the fingerprinted samples using pyrosequencing and we are currently analyzing that data set to figure out the types of bacteria that are making up the diversity patterns. There are papers identifying bacterial taxonomic groups in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, but our recent paper is the first to look over a very broad spatial scale (~ 800 kms).  

2. How extensive is you laboratory in terms of equipment? I understand that you are in Antarctica, but do you have all the equipment that you might find back home at Virginia Tech?

Crary Laboratory in McMurdo is pretty extensive, but there is not a lot of equipment for doing molecular work. When we do our work, we collect our samples in the field aseptically and we add a preservative to the soil, like Sucrose Lysis Buffer. Then we freeze the samples and ship them back to New Zealand or the US for molecular work. We have tried to extract DNA from soils in the lab at McMurdo, and it is certainly possible, but it's much easier just to do that back at the University.

That said, Crary does have a lot of basic lab equipment. There are drying ovens, muffle furnaces, fume hoods, laminar flow hoods, centrifuges, etc., so there is plenty of equipment for us to do basic soil geochemical analyses. Some research groups have pretty sophisticated setups that they require on site for their work, but our setup is pretty simple.

3. What types of methods are you employing in population measurement of micro-organism species? How do you quantify the movement of certain populations in response to climate change? 

That's an interesting question. I have been focusing more on community level measures of diversity than assessing specific population level dynamics. Most of the work we have done thus far has focused on the link between microbial biodiversity and environmental variation. In that work, we use patterns of community similarity to infer how well microbial communities are connected among Dry Valleys.

Overall, we haven't done a very good job of actually directly quantifying the movement of micro-organisms, but that is something that we have been trying to get funding to do. One of our collaborators in New Zealand did a really interesting study where they set up a pump that pumped a large volume of air through a filter, and they then sequenced the bacterial DNA that was on the filter. They sampled air at a high elevation and at a low elevation to characterize the microbial communities that are entrained in the air at different elevations, and found differences, but we need more samples to be able to sufficiently answer questions about how well different groups of micro-organisms are dispersing throughout the Dry Valleys.

Another group of collaborators associated with the McMurdo LTER focuses on nematodes, and they set up sediment traps in the Dry Valleys. They found some viable nematodes in the sediment traps, so we know that the nematodes can be dispersed by wind, but we are trying to get a better handle on how extensively they are dispersed by wind. Dr. Byron Adams at BYU has done some work looking at population level genetics to infer levels of dispersal among Dry Valleys, but that is still an ongoing area of research.

Thank you for you time! I am looking forward to what you have to say, and keep up the good work!
Stay warm!
- Jonah

Thanks for writing Jonah!

Answers for Kristin Renda

Dear Dr. Sokol,
Reading your blog, as well as other questions students like me have asked you has been very interesting. Like other students have posted before me, I am from Maplewood, NJ and it was my AP Enviro teacher who got me interested in the work you are doing. I just have a couple of questions about what life is like for you in Antarctica and how your research is being used.
1. Does the intense weather conditions ever interfere with you research?

Hi Kristin,
Weather does often interfere with our research. The 8 and a half hour flights from New Zealand to McMurdo, Antarctica are often influenced by weather. There is no control tower for the ice runway at McMurdo, so planes can only land if the weather is clear. If there is ice fog or visibility is low, then flights often have to turn around and go back to New Zealand.

LC130 plane on Ross Ice Shelf near McMurdo Station.

Because the landscape is so extreme, and because we don't want to build roads everywhere, the only practical way to get from McMurdo to our field research sites is by helicopter. The helicopters can't fly if visibility is low or of if it is too windy. Wind storms originating over the polar plateau are not uncommon, so we can have very clear, very windy days.

Helicopter landing at one of our field sites in Taylor Valley, Antarctica

2. What do you do for leisure?

At McMurdo Station, there are hiking trails around the station. A fun, short hike is to follow a trail to the top of Ob Hill, where you can get a view of the Ross Ice Shelf and McMurdo Station. If it's cold outside, I like to stay in and play music. The are guitars and other stringed instruments available for us to borrow. We also play board games and watch movies.

In the field, we can hike or play board games for fun. All in all, we usually don't have very much down time, unless we get stranded because of bad weather.

3. How do you think your research will benefit science?

That's a good question! The goal of my research is to understand the ecological processes that determine biodiversity. Two of the major drivers are (1) how well organisms move about the landscape, and (2) whether local habitat conditions favor some species over others. My research in general is to create computer models to understand how these processes influence diversity for different types of organisms (e.g., bacteria, nematodes, diatoms, etc.). In the Dry Valleys, we are trying to understand exactly which soil chemical properties are linked to soil bacterial diversity, and if the same rules apply everywhere in the Dry Valleys. We are using the data we collect to validate computer models that predict biodiversity. If our models work, we will be able to use computer models to predict how biodiversity will change in the future as the Dry Valley habitat changes for bacteria and other organisms (e.g., nematodes, diatoms, etc.).

Specific to Antarctic ecology, I hope that this work will help us determine the best way to measure biodiversity so that we can have some confidence that we will actually detect changes in the ecosystem when those changes happen.

More generally, I am comparing our biodiversity models for Antarctica against models we use in other ecosystems (e.g., the Everglades, temperate forests, urban ponds in Baltimore, etc.). I think it will be really interesting to find ecological processes that work the same way in ecosystems in Antarctica and Baltimore.

4. You said in your blog that ten years ago the glaciers were at a level that they melted to in just weeks. Do you think the lake levels will return to what they were before this recent melt, or do you think they can freeze back just as quickly as they melted?

In that post I was referring to the lakes. The lake levels in Taylor Valley dropped during a period of cooling in the 1990s. Then in one season (2001-2002), there was a lot of glacial melt. In that one season, the lake levels rose back to their previous level (recovered all the water that was lost over the previous 10 years). I think the lakes are dynamic, and rise and fall periodically. There is evidence that over the past century, the lakes have been rising. There are pictures from historic expeditions that show the lake levels were much lower in the 1910s. So the lake level decrease observed in the 1990s was an anomaly for the past century. The lake levels have been rising since I've been going to Antarctica (the past 4 years).

5. Will this recent melt affect your research in any way?

Yes. It will affect the logistics because we have semi-permanent field camps near the lakes that will need to be moved as the lakes rise. The US Antarctic Program has already had to move some huts and helicopter landing pads to uphill sites as the lakes have risen.

The lake level rise may affect some of our soil research plots, but most of the plots are quite far from the lake edge, for now. However, we anticipate that more water in the landscape will affect the Dry Valley ecosystem in general. We anticipate that with increased melt, streams will become wider, and there may be new or larger water tracks in the landscape. More wet soil will probably mean more active microbial life in the soils.

Thanks for the questions!

Answers for Chris Kearns-McCoy

Hi Chris, sorry I'm taking so long to respond. My schedule has been pretty hectic lately...

1. How do you relate to other scientists doing research elsewhere in Antarctica? For instance, are there techniques and methods that you can benefit from that come from say, the research being done in places like Lake Vostok? Even though dry valleys and submerged lakes are clearly different, they are both undisturbed environments requiring great caution, and I was wondering if some of the concerns are the same?

Great question. I'll answer this as best I can, but I am not involved in any of the subglacial lake projects. You may have read about WISSARD, which is a project where researchers are studying subglacial Lake Whillans. One of the really innovative aspects of the WISSARD project is their sterile drilling method. By avoiding contamination of the subglacial lake, with microbes and chemicals from above, they can be sure that the samples they collect represent subglacial life and the subglacial environment. Some of the scientists involved in this project consult with research groups from other countries, like Russia and South Korea, so that those countries may also develop sterile drilling methods. This is about the extent of my knowledge on that topic.

In our studies of Dry Valley soils, we work closely with microbiologists at the University of Waikato, New Zealand to understand how environmental factors, such as extreme soil chemistry, temperatures, and dispersal by wind, influence microbial diversity in arid soils.

2. As the climate warms and glacial melts in the Dry Valleys become more frequent, how do you expect the organisms you are studying to respond? Will more and more become active, or are there some that are suited to this cold that will die out?

This is a great question! This is the central question for the McMurdo Long Term Ecological Research Program! Based on observations we have made over the past few decades, and general climate projections, we anticipate increased glacial melt over the coming decades. Glacial melt water is the main source of water in the Dry Valleys, so an increase in glacial melt will be the main driver of ecological change in the Dry Valley ecosystem. We are just beginning to understand how different types life will respond to an increased presence of melt water. Overall, we hypothesize that the increased flow of water will increase the connectivity of the ecosystem. In other words, there will be more liquid water flowing through Dry Valley soils, which will be moving and mixing nutrients and microorganisms. This can be over very small scales, for example, microbes may not be able to access nutrients that are only micrometers away in dry soils, but saturating soil with water can give microbes access to nearby nutrients. At larger scales, water may mobilize nutrients and microbes and move them down stream channels over distances of 100s of meters to a few kilometers, or from stream channels into lakes. Some previous studies suggest that species that are adapted to the cold and dry antarctic climate, such as diatoms that are native to the Dry Valleys,  may lose out to more generalist species, but we're not entirely sure if this is true for all the types of organisms in the Dry Valleys.

3. What kind of infrastructure exists in Antarctica. If someone had a serious medical problem while doing research, are there sufficient resources nearby? If not, how would they be evacuated? I would imagine there are procedures in place, but I was curious as to what they are.

The infrastructure at McMurdo Station is quite extensive. There are dorms and a science lab and many buildings for support staff, equipment, and resources. There is a medical building with limited resources, but people are medevaced on the first available flight to New Zealand if a real emergency occurs.

View of McMurdo Station, Antarctica from the top of Ob Hill

McMurdo - the blue building is the cafeteria, the brown buildings at the top right are dorms, and the building with the red roof in the lower left is the medical building.

Crary Lab in McMurdo

Our lab space in Crary Lab at McMurdo Station

More answers to come...

Thanks for all the questions this season! I will answer all of them eventually, so keep an eye out for more posts here on the main page.

Letters from Mrs. Radner's 4th Grade Class at Hillel Day School in Michigan!

I received some mail! Thanks to Mrs. Radner's 4th Graders at Hillel Day School for the letters! They arrived on January 25. I got them yesterday when I checked my mail (January 29).

The letters from Mrs. Radner's 4th Grade made it to McMurdo, Antarctica! Thanks for the mail! That's the Polar Star docked behind me. It is an icebreaker that is operated by the U. S. Coast Guard.

Anwers for Emma Olender

Dear Dr. Sokol,
Your blog is awesome! Really compelling and interesting and leaves me with a lot of questions about your current research. I am from a biology class in Maplewood NJ, in which my teacher told me to check out this blog and I am glad I did. I was hoping that you could answer a few questions for me.
1. Throughout your research, have you been able to find any significant differences or noticeable traits in the organisms you are studying, that allow them to survive in this harsh weather?

Hi Emma! Thanks so much for writing. This question about traits is a really good one, and people are studying the traits of bacteria and nematodes in the Dry Valleys. I, personally, haven't not done any of this research. I do know that nematodes such as Scottenema lindsayae have special adaptations to handle freezing. Scottenema lindsayae can undergo anhydrobiosis, where it basically expels all water from its cells prior to freezing. Otherwise the expanding water would cause its cells to burst.

Kevin, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, is studying the types of enzymes that different soil bacteria use to break down carbon. That's another important question centering on the functional traits of microbes. We think that soil microbes in the Dry Valleys might not be very good at processing the type or organic matter you would find in temperate regions. Down here, microbes and mosses and lichens are the only organisms that use photosynthesis to grow and add biomass to the Dry Valley ecosystems. In most other parts of the world, vascular plants like trees and grasses are the main sources of carbon. Thus, we think the microbes down here have different traits for processing ecosystem organic carbon, compared to other parts of the world.

I think there are lots of interesting discoveries yet to be made about traits organisms have evolved, or lost over evolutionary time, to survive in this harsh and unique ecosystem.

2. What types of climate changes typically occur in Antarctica? Are they always very drastic changes?

I have only experienced the summer. Most of the sudden weather changes revolve around changing winds. When I was at the Beardmore Glacier, we experienced a wind storm that came on quite suddenly and lasted for two days. The weather went from sunny and "warm" (probably in the 20s F) to cold and very windy and very poor visibility with a wind chill of near -80 F. In the Dry Valleys, we can get similar wind storms, but they tend to raise the temperature because as the cold air falls into the valleys it expands and warms up. Sometimes we get ice fog and/or snow, but I haven't seen a blizzard.

3. How do you guys organize you data? Do you base it off of the specific climate changes in each region?
Thank you so much, and I am excited to continue reading about your research and time in Antarctica!

We are part of a Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program (mcmlter.org). Many people are involved in the LTER research group, and we collect data on the streams and glaciers and lakes and soil every year with the goal of developing a long-term record of what this ecosystem is like, so that we can understand the changes we see in the future. We have some data sets, like the flow records for the Onyx River (measurements started in the late 1960s), that go back decades and have already helped us understand climate trends through the 1990s and early 2000s.

Answers for Sarah Backstrand

Hi Dr. Sokol,
Fascinating blog! I've always wondered what it would be like to live, or just spend time in a place like Antarctica, so I'm glad my teacher suggested that we check this out. I'm also in Tim Grey's class from Maplewood, N.J. and had some questions as well.
1 . Has Kevin found that polar deserts and hot deserts similarly reflect the detrimental effects of climate change... or perhaps one more than the other? If so, which? I think many would presume that polar deserts would have more obvious effects, but it that necessarily the case? 

Hi Sarah. Thanks for writing. Very good questions. As far as I know, Kevin has not been comparing hot deserts with the Dry Valley ecosystems, so I don't have a good answer to this question. His work is testing the hypothesis that microbial diversity is higher in soils that have higher productivity. In ecology, productivity refers the rate at which autotrophic organisms grow and accumulate biomass. Autotrophs include plants, trees, cyanobacteria, algae, and anything that can fix carbon (turn inorganic carbon into biomass). Kevin is comparing "high productivity" areas in the Dry Valleys, such as Canada Stream where there are lots of moss and cyanobacteria mats, to more arid soils. He is also doing some very interesting work trying to figure out if microbes from low and high productivity soils have similar abilities (i.e., ecological functions) to break down different types of organic matter. These questions do not directly address climate change, but the answers will tell us a lot about the characteristics of the bacteria that live in the soils in low and high productivity ecosystems in the Dry Valleys, and how they influence the carbon cycle in this ecosystem. That way, we will have a better understanding of how the carbon cycle in the Dry Valleys will change as the ecosystem becomes wetter and more productive as we see more melt water in the coming decades.

Polar ecosystems in general have been more sensitive to the changing climate. So far in the Antarctic, marine habitats near Palmer peninsula have seen the most change. These ecosystems are very strongly influenced by changes in sea water temperatures. I'll write more about the Dry Valleys in another post because things are a bit more complicated here. But we anticipate warming and more melt water in the summers over the coming decades.

Cyanobacteria mats in Canada Stream represent one of the most productive areas in the Dry Valleys.

Canada Stream is fed by melt water coming off of Canada Glacier in Taylor Valley.

2. If everyone in the United States were to do one thing to help the environment, what would you suggest they do? Start driving fuel efficient cars? Be more careful about water usage? Get solar panels? Switch to all organics? Something else? 

I think conservation, in general, is something that will have an immediate impact. For example, instead of spending billions on developing a better car 10 years from now, we can just be more conservative with fuel by car pooling or using public transportation or driving less today. I think in most cases, conservation has many more benefits than just helping the environment (which is important to me, but not everyone). Living near work, I can walk to work every day and get exercise, time to think, and save money on gas. None of those things have anything to do with helping the environment.

3. Are serious storms a concern? Are they common? And can they come in really quickly while out researching?

We don't really have storms here in the summer. We do have foehn and/or katabatic wind events where cold air comes off of the high elevation polar plateau from the south and falls into the valleys expanding and heating up on its way down causing very windy conditions for us in the valleys. Other than that, I haven't really seen any storms. There is very little precipitation where we are.

Thanks for the great questions!

Here are my responses to questions from Mr. Novemsky's environmental science class. Thanks for reading the blog and posting questions!

Hello Dr. Sokol,
This is Mr. Novemsky's environmental science class at Columbia High School. We have a few questions to ask. My students want to know:
1. What is the most interesting thing that you have discovered?

On a personal note, the most interesting thing for me is really seeing what a landscape without vascular plants is like. Sure, I've read about it and seen pictures, but being in a desert with only sand and gravel and "soil" and enormous glaciers and mountains has really changed my perspective. It's amazing to see a landscape so barren, but then see life under a microscope.

I think it has been interesting following the progression of discovery of cryptic life in this very harsh landscape. The great explorer, Robert Falcon Scott, wrote in his diary over 100 years ago

“It is worthy of record, too, that we have seen no living thing, not even a moss or a lichen; all that we did find, far inland amongst the moraine heaps, was the skeleton of a Weddell seal, and how that came there is beyond guessing.  It is certainly a valley of the dead…”

Even as recent as 1969 the soils were considered sterile. Only recently have biologists begun to learn that there are organisms that have adapted unique strategies to handle extreme cold and desiccation.

For my work, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to collaborate with some really innovative people who have figured out how to find very small, cryptic organisms, including nematodes, tardigrades, collembola, bacteria, diatoms, and cyanobacteria. I have been focusing on trying to understand the biodiversity patterns of these organisms. That is, I'm trying to understand if we can find these organisms everywhere if we look in the right places, or if some of them are restricted to specific valleys. An organism that only occurs in one valley would be considered endemic, or unique to that valley. Some organisms, like the nematode Scottenema lindsayae, seem to be wide spread throughout dry antarctic soils. This nematode is survivor! I am working to use mathematical models to understand the distributions of these different types of organisms in the Dry Valleys. We're finding that some types of organisms, like diatoms in streams, may be more likely to be influenced by climate change than some of the other more widespread organisms, but we still need to do a lot of work to really understand what will happen.

2. Could the features that allow those organisms that you study to survive the cold help humans in cold climates?

Probably. Some researchers do what is called "bioprospecting" where they look at the types of proteins and enzymes in organisms that have unique abilities to survive in strange places. For example, Scottenema lindsayae probably makes some really interesting enzymes and proteins for anhydrobiosis -- which means gets rid of all water from its cells and go dormant, which is important here because the reason freezing kills you is because the water expands when it freezes and makes cells burst. That's not my area of expertise though.

3. If ice keeps melting, could McMurdo station be submerged?

The station won't, unless sea levels rise substantially. The station is on a volcanic island. However, the runway that the planes land on is on the Ross Ice Shelf, so if that melts there will be no way in or out except on boats!

4.Could you tell us a bit more about your daily routine, including what you do in your spare time?

Good question. I'm going to make a separate blog post about this with pictures as soon as I have time. Right now I don't seem to have spare time, but there is a lot going on. They had an art show on station last night and there is a marathon tomorrow! I'm not going to have time to participate though.

5. Who sponsors and supports your research?

The National Science Foundation pays for our research. We have to write a proposal to do research and it is reviewed by other scientists who are very very critical of our work. I believe that in this past year, only 2.5% of proposals to NSF to do ecology were funded.

6. If someone wants to go do this research, how would we go about that?

Do undergraduate research when you go to college! I can't stress this enough. It is really important to get involved as an undergraduate, and most institutions will have work-study jobs where you can work in a lab and get paid while you also get your foot in the door in an interesting field. I worked in a few different labs when I was an undergraduate and it helped me discover the types of science I liked, but also it helped me discover what I didn't like.

Thanks so much for the questions!