Directory

Start date:
Late December
End date:
Early February
Locations:
Dry Valleys, Taylor Valley, Wright Valley
Principle Investigator:
Dr. Byron J Adams
Organisation:
Brigham Young University
State
Utah
Initially funded in 1980, the U.S. LTER network is a collaborative effort of more than 1,800 scientists and students. The McMurdo LTER program is a multi-disciplinary aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems study in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. It is one of 26 LTER sites where researchers are studying ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales. The soils team will maintain, monitor, and sample their long-term plots near Lakes Bonney, Fryxell, and Hoare and aims to determine impacts of natural factors and those associated with potential climate change on soil biota. This six-year award cycle comprises seven collaborative projects: C-504-M (Gooseff), C-505-M (Priscu), C-506-M (Gooseff), C-507-M (Adams), C-508-M (Takacs-Vesbach), C-509-M (Gooseff), and C-511-M (Doran).
Soils
Participants will make overnight trips to Dry Valleys camps and day trips on foot and by helicopter to Taylor, Miers, and Garwood valleys’ sites. The group will store samples at camps but will do all sample processing at Crary Lab. Field activities may include: continuing long-term measurements of soil biodiversity and biogeochemical processes; monitoring established soil meteorological stations; sampling soils near fixed and historic camps; continuing the long-term permafrost thaw experiment (P3); continuing the long-term soil stoichiometry experiment (SSE); establishing permanent sampling transects for the soil-lake inundation moat experiment (SLIME); establishing a new study monitoring moss and algal ground cover and production in near-stream environments and dry soils; and establishing soil sampling sites for the permafrost degradation experiment (PDE).