Directory
Late November
Late December
Dry Valley, Victoria Valley, Lake Vida, Trough Lake, Mount Boreas
Dr Sarah Johnson
Georgetown University
District of Columbia
Field team members will make day trips by helicopter from station to various sites in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. They will travel on foot and collect microbial mat, geologic, and sediment samples from lake edges and from nearby upslope deposits. They will use small spades, hand shovels, and sterile spatulas to collect small samples and deposit them in Whirl-Paks, vials, or bottles. The samples will be immediately placed on ice or in a cryoshipper. They will also collect some lake water samples. They will process samples and perform some extractions to assess DNA quality and do preliminary sequencing analyses in the Crary Lab but the majority of their samples will be prepared for shipment to the home institution for further analyses.