University Valley

University Valley is located at high elevation in the Dry Valleys (1650-1800 m.a.s.l) in the Quartermain Range. It has a small glacier at the head of the valley, and when we got there, it was covered in snow!   This was really surprising, but gave us a chance to see in situ just how quickly snow in this valley sublimes and gets blown away by strong katabatic winds.

Stitch of University Valley and both side walls- note that part of the valley is shadowed- this effects the cryptoendolithic communities living on that valley wall which receive less sunlight. 

University Valley is located in the ‘stable upland zone’ of the Dry Valley is a region of the Dry valleys where there is the presence of both dry permafrost, and ice-cemented permafrost. This is a rare condition on Earth, but is also known to occur on Mars, hence the interest in testing the IceBreaker Drill here. Quick definitions: Permafrost is ground that does not rise above 0C for two consecutive years, and DRY permafrost is permafrost with less than 3% water (negligible). Dry permafrost looks just like sand at the beach: 

While the habitability of the permafrost is being investigated in University Valley, one observable niche are the Beacon Supergroup sandstone that forms the valley walls. Just looking at them you wouldn’t suspect the rich biomass that lies within: 

Cryptoendolith hunting along the sandstone valley walls in university Valley

cracked open rock revealing the life hidden within

more endolith glamour shots

The field campaign was very successful- several permafrost cores and pits were sampled, cryptoendoliths galore,  and the IceBreaker drill performed well under the Mars like conditions of University Valley. Now, the lab fun begins. 

The IceBreaker drill testing in University Valley.

Pearse Valley- 2 Women drill team at it again!

Jan 21st/22^nd

A quick preamble- On our way to Pearse we flew over Blood Falls, I could only snap a few  quick photos, but this site deserves mention . It is one of the more well-known sites in the Dry Valleys, and one of the coolest. Blood Falls discharges from Taylor Glacier as a cold (~7 X) ancient marine brine, rich in sulfates and oxidized iron, castiung the reddish hue that gives the falls its name. 

Microbiology wise- the sulfur rich waters are dominated by autotrophic sulphur oxidizing thiomicrospira identified through molecular surveys of the water, biomass levels were 10⁵ cells/mL. 

Pearse was spectacular, and can’t adequately be described in words, but if it could, majestic, awesome (in the very literal sense) would be some words to pull out. Mars and I had the place to ourselves and we made good use and time of it. We set up camp in a beautiful section of the valley right next to a permanently ice covered lake, and close to a glacier, a quick lunch and it was off to work .

 This permanently ice covered  lake (Lake Joyce) is a really fascinating spot for me as a microbiologist- folks like Dale Anderson dive into the frigid waters here (‘coolest’ job?) and provide a glimpse of just how versatile and extreme life can be. What little light gets through the ice cover of this lake provides the energy for cyanobacterial life (primary producers) within the lake.  These organisms form calcifying microbial mat structures that look like an alien world. 

We weren’t there to sample the lake though, we were interested in the soils found in this dry valley. In this particular valley wet streaks can be observed on some of the valley slopes. Could soils in these wet-streaks harbour active microbial life? We took some  surface and ice-cemented permafrost samples from both the dry and ‘wet’ streaks, as well as measured soil flux in situ with the LosGatos Ultraportable Greenhouse gas analyzer that we had brought to the field to measure CO₂ and CH₄ flux from soils. 

One day and night of work in Pearse, and it was onward to University Valley. 

Soil collars for respiration measurements set up in the dry (left) and wet (right) soils in Pearse valley. 

The cold and aridity of the Dry Valleys are the predominant reasons that this region is considered one of the most Mars like places on Earth. 

heading into the cold.

So far we have a green light weather wise to take off for the field today. I will be spending a night with Margarita at Pearse Valley, it will be a two person camp, and I am looking forward to the physical and mental test of it! We were supposed to leave 2 days ago, but got dumped with 40 cm of snow here in McMurdo ( great oppourtunity to get some garbage bag/cardboard box sledding in!). What this means though is that Pearse may have a layer of snow on its valley floor which may make sampling and making measurements a bit difficult. No point in speculating though, instead its time to get to the field!

From Pearse we will be heading straight to University Valley, where we will join 3 members of our team (Wayne Pollard, Alfonso Davila, and Denis Lacelle). We should be there about 2 weeks if all goes well.



Hopefully you won't hear from me for the next two and a half weeks!

Heres a photo of some seals taken from the helicopter to tide you over. 

Lake Frxyell day trip recap

Phew, finally made it out to the field two days ago.

This was a day trip to Lake Frxyell one of the "warmer" and "wetter" Dry valleys that I will be looking at to compare with the colder and drier, higher elevation Dry Valleys.

View of Lake Frxyell flying in on helicopter (for scale, those small yellow things are Scott tents)

It was a two person team, and I got my first taste of coring through ice-cemented permafrost. As an exercise for the kids doing the remote drilling with the Icebreaker drill (and you can try this too!), Margarita likes to tell them to try pouring some water in a tupperware container full of soil and freezing it, and then to try scooping out the soil. You can't, this ground is called ice-cemented ground, because it is about as hard as cement. Coring through cement is no easy task, but we got the samples we needed to do the science (after about three attempts, since we kept encountering large frozen rocks with depth in our holes).

Our two woman drill team!

I was also able to take soil gas measurements, to measure any microbial respiration that could be taking place in the soil, even at sub-zero temperatures. I was measuring the rate of methane and carbon dioxide flux from the soils, to try to determine if the microbial populations are alive and active in these cold and dry conditions, or if they are dormant and just frozen in the soil.

Taking soil respiration measurements in the Dry Valleys 

I was able to collect samples and observe some life in this valley, in the form of endoliths .  I saw cryptoendoliths (crypto= hidden, endo= within, lith= rocks) and hypoliths (life under rocks). I saw little patches of green under translucent rocks when I lifted them up, and some cracked open rocks had a line of green a few millimetres below the surface.  Even though the conditions are very dry, cold and harsh for life, rocks provide a niche that microbial life can thrive in. A little bit of moisture is trapped within and underneath the rocks, providing liquid water for life. Light can penetrate through certain kinds of rock, and so, just underneath the rock surface photosynthetic bacteria like cyanobacteria are able to use the light as an energy source, and carbon dioxide from the air to create biomass. These photoautotrophic primary producers can support heterotrophic bacteria, and so endolithic life isn't just one life form, but a whole community.

Cryptoendolith from University Valley

will make a last update before I hit the field a bit later tonight.

More Astrobiology Research at McMurdo: WISSARD

A group here doing research at McMurdo recently made the news.  They are using sterile hot water drilling techniques to drill into an ice covered lake in the Antarctic. Any life that live in the lake would experience cold, but also a lack of sun (and therefore no photosynthetic activity) as a means of primary productivity. These ice covered lakes can be thought of as analogs to icy moons, such as Jupiters moon Europa. Europa is though to have an ocean of liquid water locked under its icy surface. Enceladus, the cold moon of Saturn, has plumes of water that shoot up through the ice to the surface and falls back down as snow. Read more about how researchers are studying subsurface water in an icy environment here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/science/wissard-project-seeks-signs-of-life-under-antarctica.html?ref=science&_r=0

Remote Ops of the IceBreaker Drill

So, one more 6 am wake up to dress in full gear ready for the field....and one more windy, snowy, low visibility, no helicopter flight out day. I was supposed to leave for Lake Fryxell in the Dry Valleys today, and then head out to University Valley tonight, but yet again, mother nature had other plans for me.

It worked out well, because I was able to stick around to see the IceBreaker Drill set up just outside the Crary labs  (an impressive, well run, tight science ship!) here in McMurdo station. The weather did not make setting up the drill very fun, but that's part of the reason they are testing the drill out here and not a safe, warm lab: to test the drill in the types of conditions it would encounter in extreme environments, like those on Mars.

Today the drill was tested with a group of kids in the U.S., who all the way in Arizona were able to send commands to the drill, and have it operate here in the Antarctic. We talked about our research with them on the phone, answered questions, and they remote operated the auger to drill at various speeds here. They were able to visually see the drill in action via webcam. I captured a bit of the scene on camera, but as you can imagine, the wind didn't make for great audio (and I had to upload a low-res version of the video to not choke up the internet that we all share here). Here's a taste of what was happening on our end in the Antarctic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSNuwtTO8_w&feature=youtu.be

Margarita Marinova (standing next to the IceBreaker drill) talks to kids in Arizona, while Brian Glass and Bolek Mellerowicz look over remote drill operations 

birds eye view

If you're curious about what its like here at the base, here's this nifty webcam! Right now: its pretty nippy (-15 C with windchill) and foggy. I can't even see the seals on the ice from the base!

http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmwebcam.cfm

Happy Campers

So a quick update and a bit of yarn spinning about snow school.

We are still in McMurdo and not in the field because we are waiting on some equipment to get in on planes. If the trip from Canada to the Antarctic was indicative of nothing else, its that the weather is nothing trivial to deal with, and that is the primary reason the equipment wasn't here before our arrival. 

*fingers crossed* we should see it today. 

Either way, half the team is going out to University Valley tomorrow (the main study site, the coldest and driest), while some of us will stay behind to test the prototype Mars permafrost drill, and some of us will sample from some "warmer and wetter" (relatively) sites. Later we will all move to University Valley.  This is again of course, all up to the weather gods. 

HAPPY CAMPER SCHOOL

Before you are allowed to go out into the field here, you have to take a short, two day intensive, survival training course. There are some serious aspects to it, hypothermia and frostbite are no joke, and we spent a while looking at photos of frostbite and hearing tales of lost limbs from careless mistakes. Once we went over the protocols for various operations and scenarios here at McMurdo, we drove out onto the McMurdo iceshelf on a Delta, where we would be spending the "night" (24 hour sunlight!)  on our own (the instructors wouldn't be far away).

We learned how to use all the gear in the survival kits (these come complete with dehydrated food to last 2 people 3 days, 2 sleeping bags, a mountain tent, stakes, an ice saw, and a small foldable shovel). We learned how to use HF radios to call for help, including all the lingo.  These radios are pretty neat (Ham radio is a hobby of Brian Glass on our team), and you can talk (or listen) to someone with a HF radio just about anywhere in the world. They work by bouncing signals from the earth, against the ionosphere, and then back down, and then back up, and then back down etc etc around the sphere of our little pale blue dot. 

We learned how to make a few different types of shelters from the cold: a mountain tent, a Scott tent (essentially the exact same design that Robert Falcon Scotts team used during their expeditions 100 years ago in the Antarctic), and, a snow trench (NOT the same as quincy to my Canadian winter camping friends). Even though I decided to dig my own grave (I mean trench) to sleep in that night, the camp had to be set up first.

Scott tent

snow wall

our kitchen, the heart of the home

snow grave

The Scott tents are pretty great and can stand up to heavy winds on their own, but the mountain tents needed a bit more protection from winds coming from the south. We built a protective snow wall by sawing out cubes of snow and setting up the tents on the lee side of the wall.  Similarly, we built a wall around a trench we had dug, and set up a pretty decent kitchen with camp stoves (like every house party, this where most of the happy campers getting trained hung out and talked during the night). Dinner that night...was dehydrated food, the taste tempered out with plentiful hot chocolate, made from water melted from snow near by.

Bolek Mellerowicz making fresh steps under the gaze of Mount Erebus

Me making my snow trench, while Brian Glass and another PI gaze on, I could make a joke about the PIs standing around giving advice while the grad students are digging themselves deeper into their own holes.....

The snow trench was not too hard to make, though I was up until midnight digging it out. Pretty much you just dig a narrow pit a bit bigger than the length of your body (mine was about 5 ft deep, and 7 ft wide), widen the bottom out so you can wiggle about in it, throw a sleeping bag in, and cover up the top with some ice blocks. Its actually pretty warm in there once you get a body in it, but I didnt make mine wide enough and every time I tried to sit up or try and find something close to my feet a rain of snow from the walls would fall on me  and I would get wet (wet and cold= not a good survival technique). Would have been fine all night, if it wasn't for the fact that I had been sleeping ON my pee bottle rather than having it within arms reach, so getting up in the middle of the night just got me a snow shower. I had to get out of the grave to dry off in the polar desert air, and found I had the entire camp to myself while everyone slept. Serenity, majestic Mount Erebus smoking at the top, and not a sound except the wind against our flags. Pretty great as far as training goes!

No rest for the wicked

Just going to shoot a quick update because I am wiped.

We left sunny New Zealand, sat in the C130 ( I thought it was a sweet ride, but definitely not luxury flying), and when the doors opened up 8ish hours later we were in pretty soft snow, with a lot of white around us (not unlike the conditions I left in Canada, but with more amounts of nothingness). Arrived in Antarctica! Finally! Or so I thought.. it took about 2 hours to get from the airfield to McMurdo because of the bad road conditions. Our normal ride (IVAN, see below picture) couldn't handle the soft roads so well, so it was actually towed while on the ice (where the airfield is) with us all inside of it on a magic carpet (yes, more or less like the magic carpet we go sledding with, except much, much bigger) until we reached land.  On the way back to camp we saw a lone, decapitated penguin (just kidding, it was hiding its head) which was really unexpected and really really fantastic to see. Seals too! Even though I was super exhausted, I couldnt close my eyes during the ride because those first glimpses of the Antarctic were just too exhilarating.

IVAN

Headless penguin

We arrived to McMurdo station, got briefed, and were assigned dorm rooms. 6 hours sleep later I was on my way to happy camper training: a survival training program where we camp out on the McMurdo ice shelf overnight, learn about how to recognize, treat, and PREVENT things like hypothermia and frostbite, and general field camp practices to keep you (and the people around you safe). I got back from this two day course a few hours ago, and I am wiped.

Will tell you a bit more about the course in a later post, its worth talking about in a bit more detail.

There is a lot of really cool science going on at McMurdo right now, and I am having a blast talking to the other scientists that are around and hearing about their projects.

Happy campers on their way to snow school 

Its about the journey, not the destination, right?

Well, we got on the plane (a C-130 I'm told by my aviation savvy teammate Margarita Marinova, who flies helicopters as a hobby...) flew for about an hour out, and then boomeranged back due to mechanical issues. Back in Christchurch, NZ now, and the current plan is to hopefully take off tomorrow at 9 am.

In the wait though, I bought a stuffed penguin for my niece, it makes (penguiny?) noises when you squeeze it, which I am pretty sure will drive my teammates crazy after about a week of camping with me. Either I will disappear  or the penguin will, stay tuned.

crew examining our plane after we boomeranged back to Christchurch, NZ

Hitting the ice tomorrow!

Came back from a hike at Arthurs pass today to a note slipped under the door: Someones picking you up at 7:30 am, you are going to the Antarctic tomorrow.

Huzzah!

Hopefully the flight doesnt "boomerang" back from McMurdo station if the weather isn't favourable, its going to take us about 8 hours to get there.

Time to repack my stuff, and get ready to leave the suite life.

Welcome to Polar Research

Currently am sitting in a rather comfortable hotel room in Christchurch, New Zealand, waiting for word for when I will get to fly to McMurdo station, Antarctica. While the T-shirt weather is nice for a Canadian who is used to sweaters in January, I am more than anxious to get out onto the ice in the Antarctic. We were supposed to leave 2 days ago, and the current plan is to not leave for another 2 days. The runway in McMurdo was too slushy and soft for planes to land (lets wish for some cold weather!),  and there is a backlog of people that are waiting to get to the ice.

Upon letting Lyle (my PI)  know that I was still in New Zealand, and not the Antarctic as planned, I got a simple email: Welcome to polar research and travel, expect more of the same as the weather essentially dictates everything you will attempt to do. 

I am making the most of more delays as any naturalist would: checking out the calderas, hot springs, and hiking trails that New Zealand has to offer (this beats getting delayed at the airport!).

While I'm off exploring, check out this video from my lab about polar research and astrobiology in the Canadian High Arctic.  Searching for Life on Mars

Akaroa caldera

Out of the Fridge and into Freezer

Spent many hours in an airport in Toronto, Canada, since my flight (and then second re-booked flight) was delayed due to the snowy conditions. There is no use being frustrated at the cold climate, since I am on my way to a much harsher environment, but airports are not my favourite place to be delayed. I was lucky enough to be on the airplane while it was being de-iced to make it flight worthy before we continued our journey, it was like being in a car wash for planes!

Plane being de-iced at Pearson Airport

                                     

 After many airports and many more delayed/cancelled flights (New York, Los Angeles) I arrived in Sydney, Australia, to (unsurprisingly) find out that I had missed my connection to New Zealand, and I was going to be spending the night. New Years Eve, stranded in Sydney by my lonesome?

This is where social media kicks in, found a friend in no time thanks to facebook, and had another stroke of luck: she had been camped out all day next to the water at Sydney Harbour bridge, in anticipation for the show at midnight. Sydney is known for their spectacular New Years Eve fireworks displays, and she had scored prime blanket space on the grass.  Great way to ring in 2013, and I leave for Christchurch (and the Antarctic!) shortly.

Sydney Harbour fireworks