Dawn in Antarctica

Dale Andersen, Ian Hawes, Chris McKay, Asim Bej, Valery Galchenko, Vladirmir Akimov, and I will be heading to Lake Untersee, Antarctica under the auspices of the Russian Antarctic Program in November this year.  Our expedition is being funded through the Field Museum, Chicago, from private donations!  I'll provide details when I have a complete list from Dale, who has managed to raise enough money and in-kind support to make this expedition possible. As I start to plan for the trip, I realize how luxurious our trips with the National Science Foundation have been.  They provide good food, lots of help with equipment, warm clothing, and lots of logistics.  This time, we have to bring all our own food and field equipment, including warm clothes.  We'll be eating a lot of freeze dried food rather than "home cooked" meals from regular groceries.  I'll also be doing an new clothing inventory since I won't have the great layers from NSF.  I bought a mid-wei...

Our first paper on Lake Joyce is now online in Geobiology.  In it, we focus on evidence for a 7 meter rise in lake level in the past 40 years and the responses of the microbial communities to that environmental change.  It's exciting to have it out!

Dale Andersen, Ian Hawes, Jenny Webster-Brown, Chris McKay, and I just published a paper on large conical stromatolites in Lake Untersee, Antarctica.  It's on the opposite side of Antarctica from McMurdo, and I haven't been there.  However, Dale and Ian discovered these cool stromatolites, and I helped put them into the context of some of the most ancient stromatolites on Earth.  Here are links to two news stories, plus the paper (which is open access): Science News article Astrobiology.com article Science paper in Geobiology Journal

Well, I haven't written since we lost internet service at Lake Joyce, way back in November.  Since then, we went to Lake Vanda, some went to Lake Hoare, we returned to McMurdo and New Zealand at different times, and all of us are back to our "regular" lives.  I've been teaching a lot. On Monday, I did give a video conference seminar for the NASA Astrobiology Institute on our research results from our Antarctic field work.  The NAI is a virtual institute with members all over the US and affiliates all over the world.  Thus, the video conference format.  They also record the speaker's slides and voice and post them for streaming.  If you'd like to hear what I had to say, check out:   http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/seminars/detail/189 If you'd like to read some great posts on our field work, check out Tyler's blog at:   http://cyanobacterialadventures.blogspot.com/

(Written Nov 2, posted Nov 7) When I visited my dad this summer, our friend, Fred Dunham, loaned me his copy of the book “The Worst Journey in the World” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. It is record of Scott’s second (and final) expedition to Antarctica, and “Cherry” was on the trip. This is supposed to be one of the best books about the science investigations and trip to the South Pole ever written, and it is excellent. (I can’t say that it’s the best since it’s the only one I’ve even started reading.) I’m up to Chapter 6 “The First Winter”. In the first late summer to early fall that the expedition was in Antarctica, Cherry, Scott, and others were caught at Hut Point, and they stayed in Discovery Hut, which I described in an earlier post. Interestingly, I thought that they must have been miserable - cold, short of food, etc. Cherry says that they were cold and short of food. However, he loved his time there; it provided some of his fondest memories of the expedition. They had plen...

(Written Nov 1, posted Nov 5) The weather has still been warm, with only a few days with substantial wind. Last night had the strongest winds. For the previous couple of days, we had some internet access, but I didn’t take advantage of it. I was planning to do so today, but the wind seems to have misaligned one of the repeaters or there is another problem, and we don’t have access today. All has been going well in camp. Dale, Ian, and Tyler are diving regularly, collecting samples, taking photos and video, measuring light levels, measuring O2 levels, etc. Alfonso has been taking ice cores as well as studying the photosynthetic behavior of bacteria growing in and under rocks. Stephen has been helping with the diving and coring as well as maintaining a time lapse photo system and two meteorology stations. I’ve focused mostly on trying to understand microbialites by dissecting them. Small pinnacles from 8.5 m water depth were first submerged by water in the early 1990’s. They sh...

(Written Oct 23) I’ve been at Lake Joyce for a week now. We’ve set up all our tents and melted a dive hole. The science gear is unpacked and being used on the first samples! All had gone very smoothly, and we are way ahead of schedule. And the mats are recovering and precipitating calcite! Here’s an abbreviated description of week 1: Steve and I arrived into camp last on Saturday, and the weather was beautiful - bright sun and no wind. It was warm! Megan (from the BFC) had already set up my tent, so I just had to move in. The cook tent, the toilet tent, and the land-based science tent were also already up. Everything looked great. Over the next two days, Megan and Leah (BFC) assembled the floors for the tents we put on it ice, one for dive gear and one for science. They put up the tents with a bit of help from us. The rest of us sorted gear out and got things organized. Evenings were lots of fun with Megan and Leah and always included lots of laughter. They flew back to M...