Directory

Start date:
October
End date:
December
Locations:
Lake Joyce and Lake Vanda
Principle Investigator:
Professor Ian Hawes
Organisation:
University of Canterbury
Our programme for 2013-14 comprises collaborative, lake-based research between the NZ-supported event K081 (led by Ian Hawes, University of Canterbury) and a US-supported event (number pending, led by Dawn Sumner, University of California at Davis). This cooperation has the benefits of minimising the total footprint in Antarctica, optimising use of logistic resources and enhancing the science output of both groups. It emerges from successful past links between the University of Canterbury and University of California research groups and will be accomplished by cross-linking event staff and equipment and coordinating science objectives such that the different, but overlapping, research hypotheses of the two groups can be addressed by the combined activities.

Part A of the programme is based at Lake Joyce and is nominally planned for support by the USAP. Its basic goal is to map the distribution of benthic microbial communities and sedimentation patterns and lake level rise in this lake and will be based on sensors lowered through small holes drilled through the ice cover.
Part B of the programme is based at Lake Vanda and is planned for support by Antarctica NZ. It shares with Part A the goal of mapping the distribution of microbial communities on the bottom of the lake using instruments lowered through the lake ice, but adds to it the need to access these communities for physiological measurements using divers.