Directory

Start date:
Mid October
End date:
Early December
Locations:
Dry Valleys, Taylor Valley
Principle Investigator:
Dr. Slawek M Tulaczyk
Organisation:
University of California Santa Cruz
State
California
In Antarctica, millions of years of freezing have led to the development of hundreds of meters of permafrost. This slow freezing has trapped and concentrated water into local and regional briny aquifers that are many times saltier than seawater. Such unusual groundwater systems may support microbial life, supply nutrients to coastal ocean and ice-covered lakes, and influence glacier motion. These briny aquifers also represent potential terrestrial analogs for deep life habitats on other planets, such as Mars, and provide a testing ground for the search for extraterrestrial water. This project will reveal if cold polar deserts hide a subsurface pool of liquid water. This will have significant implications for understanding cold polar glaciers, ice-covered lakes, frozen ground, polar microbiology, and for predictions of their responses to future change.
A team of nine will deploy to McMurdo Station where they will spend a week constructing and calibrating a transient electromagnetic sensor (SkyTEM), which they will use to map the hidden distribution of groundwater and ice. Following construction of the SkyTEM, the team will conduct testing over the McMurdo Ice Shelf and surveys of the Miers and Garwood Valleys. They will then move to camps at Marble Point, Lake Bonney, and Round Mountain where the ANTarctic Airborne ElectroMagnetics (ANTAEM) and surface-sampling teams will conduct surveys and collect water, ice, and sediment samples.