We’re leaving for East Antarctica in a week, and I am exceedingly excited. I haven’t been there before. I know it’s going to be cold, with long strenuous days and probably not any ice cream. But I’m eager to go, especially because of the following:

1. Dead Seals. Yes my friends, I hear there are places in Wright Valleys that are littered with the mummified corpses of dead seals. I’ve been told they get sick and crawl their way inland to die. Some of them have been gruesomely decorating this otherwise mammal-free (scientists not included) region for over 3,000 years.
2. Blood Falls. Tied with “The Labyrinth” for the best name in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. There, salty water dyed orange with microbes gushes out of the nose of Taylor Glacier. I’m going to be camping right up the hill from this marvel of nature.
3. Don Juan Pond. Don Juan Pond would be on my list simply because of its ridiculous name, but it’s also the saltiest lake in the world. I like saline lakes, and I can’t imagine why that affection wouldn’t scale with salinity.
4. Ventifacts. In dry areas where rain and snow don’t contribute much to the breaking down of rocks, the wind can dominate. The wind sand-blasts rocks in the dry valleys, sometimes forming rock sculptures that are a very artistic blend of geometric and organic. These are called ventifacts.
5. Patterned ground. One time, in Greenland, I found a little circle of stones about 2 meters across, half-buried in the mud. It was patterned ground, organized by the freeze-thaw action of permafrost. I was really proud of my find and have ever since looked favorably on patterned ground. In the dry valleys, it’s EVERYWHERE. And MUCH MUCH larger than 2 meters in diameter.
6. Helicopter rides. Being in a helicopter is totally different from being in a plane, because you fly so much closer to the ground. I’ve only been in one once, but the sheer facility of admiring surficial geology from a helicopter seems to be unmatched. And I am guaranteed at least two helicopter rides, one in and one out, unless my field mates decide to just leave me on the continent.
7. Flying feces. We are not allowed to put human waste into the environment, so it all has to go into barrels. The barrels fill up, then get helicoptered back out to McMurdo base. Which means our poo will be flying over some of the most majestic, pristine wilderness lands of the planet. Do not fear, I will dedicate an entire post to this process, once I experience the full flying feces effect for myself.

Pictures and further description of these things will have to await the treasured combination of field luck and internet access.

We’re working in the western central McMurdo Dry Valleys, where the Taylor and Wright outlet glaciers cross over the Transantarctic Mountains. Our field and camp sites are in the valleys of Pearse, Taylor, and Wright (both North and South Fork). The two permanent camps, which are where the internet is, are at Lake Hoare and Lake Bonney. The Labyrinth wins the prize for my favorite McMurdo name.

Click for larger image.

While most of Antarctica is indeed a great white mass of ice, open ground is found in the mountainous region south of New Zealand. This is the McMurdo Dry Valleys, a polar desert where only microbes, moss, and lichen grow. That alone makes it an interesting place, one that has attracted all sorts of extremophile biologists. We are not researching the biology of the dry valleys, though, but rather the ice.

Ice is everywhere here, though it’s sometimes hidden below ground. In the bitter aridity of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, ice withers away. It sublimates, turning to water vapor without the chance to melt. So, if ice is left exposed to the elements for long enough, it eventually disappears. But underground, ice is at least partially protected and can survive for much longer. And its shape and composition holds a record of how and when it formed.

This is what we’re interested in. How did the buried ice in the McMurdo Dry Valleys form? How old is it? What does it tell us about climate changes in the area over the past tens or hundreds of thousands of years? The answers will vary, depending on the microclimate of valleys, the behavior of nearby glaciers, and the elevation of the ice.

This blog details the Antarctic field experiences of our group during the 2015 season. We are geoscientists researching buried ice in the McMurdo Dry Valleys— specifically, Taylor, Upper Wright, and Pearse Valleys (see site map).

We are performing GPR surveys, maintaining cameras for time-lapse photography, collecting meteorological data, and sampling ice, sediments, and boulders.

We are:

• Kate Swanger, PI and professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell
• Jay Dickson, science data analyst at Brown University
• Esther Babcock, geophysicist at GeoTek Alaska Inc
• Rachel Valletta, graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania
• Kelsey Winsor, postdoc at the University of Massachusetts Lowell

That last one is me.

Learn more in this news story from UMass Lowell.

Welcome to Antarctic Dry Valleys 2015 blog as UMass Lowell EEAS Asst. Prof. Kate Swanger and post-doctoral researcher Kelsey Winsor venture to Antarctica. Read about their adventures right here.

This is not Kate’s first trip to the great white desert. In 2013-2014 she led an expedition to Antarctica to investigate how the continent’s glaciers have responded to climate fluctuations in the past.

They leave October 12, 2015 for a return trip along with researchers from Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The project is funded with a 3-year $330,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Learn more.