Expedition Search

An international team of scientists from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia traveled to McMurdo and Casey Stations in Antarctica to finish installing equipment on an airplane which was used later in the field season to conduct airborne surveys over the Aurora Subglacial Basin, a geologic formation under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The area is one that was considered stable until recently, but could now represent the weak underbelly of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on Earth. The research aimed to learn how Earth's climate changed in the past and how future climate change could affect global sea levels.

The team flew an upgraded World War II-era DC-3 aircraft using multiple airborne geophysical instruments to map the thickness of the ice sheet and measure the texture, composition, density, and topography of rocks below the ice. Data from the project helped model East Antarctic ice stability and helped forecast how ice might react to climate change.

The research being conducted may also help solve mysteries about past climate, as the team searches for new sites to drill ice cores with the potential to extend the ice core record beyond one million years. For more information, visit the ICECAP website.

The scientific objectives of the cruise aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden included collecting a range of data in rarely traveled areas of the Antarctic seas and coastline, including the Amundsen and eastern Ross Seas. An international research team studied the oceanography and biogeochemistry of the region while in transit to Antarctica, with a particular emphasis on the processes that control the production and destruction of greenhouse gases and on the role of sea ice microorganisms in this process. These studies added to our limited knowledge of these remote corners of the Antarctic Seas and allowed future researchers to expand their monitoring efforts in these regions.

Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and the most active in Antarctica. The team from NM Tech worked at the summit of the volcano for over four weeks during the austral summer of 2008-09. Most of the team members undertook a major seismic experiment which imaged the conduit (pipe) which feeds molten magma to the permanent lake of lava in the crater of Erebus volcano. A second seismic experiment looked at the deeper crustal structure under the volcano to understand where the magma is generated. The team installed 100 seismometers to supplement 32 already installed on the volcano. Then they set off explosion at 14 sites on and around the volcano using dynamite and other materials to create seismic waves that were recorded by the seismometers. This allowed the team to cat-scan the inside of the volcano. They continued monitoring emissions of gases and aerosols and maintained instruments to monitor the weather and deformation of the volcano.

A small team of earth scientists and engineers used a specialized drill to reach buried ice deposits in Beacon Valley – a part of the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica. Buried ice deposits represent a new and potentially far-reaching archive of Earth’s atmosphere and climate. The drill operations retrieved ice cores, which enabled the research team to gain access to a record of atmospheric and climatic change extending back for many millions of years. The ice that was drilled was estimated to be over several million years in age, making it by far the oldest ice yet known on this planet.

Simultaneously, the team worked in the Dry Valleys to seek a better understanding of surface processes above buried ice on Earth, for insight into Martian history and the potential for life on Mars. The cold-polar desert of the Dry Valleys is one of the most Mars-like climatic environments and landscapes on Earth.

Additionally, the team continued to investigate the timing of tundra extinction in Antarctica. Collaborating with colleagues from North Dakota State University, the team examined ancient lake beds outside of Beacon Valley that contain freeze-dried remnants of mosses, beetles, and diatoms, all of which underwent rapid extinction around 13.9 million years ago. For the past 13.9 million years, climate conditions in the Dry Valleys have been too cold for even the hardiest of tundra plants and animals; fortunately, however, the conditions have been ideal for long-term preservation of multi-million year old, buried ice.

Dr. Marchant explains the significance of sampling in Beacon Valley in this video.

The research team continued exploration of remote regions of the seafloor around McMurdo Station, Antarctica with a specially designed remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for underwater research. The ROV could be deployed through a small (15 cm) hole in the sea ice, enabling access to regions beyond scuba diving depths (at 40-170 m). The researchers located historical experimental structures on the sea floor around McMurdo Station and investigated the colonization of these structures by species of sessile invertebrates. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to explore and document the rates and patterns of ecological succession from one of the most extreme habitats in the world. The team also tested protocols for conducting sonar mapping with the new ROV as a first step towards creating high-resolution, bathymetric maps of the entire seafloor around McMurdo Station.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) project is an interdisciplinary study of the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in a cold desert region of Antarctica. The McMurdo LTER project is one of 21 sites comprising the National Science Foundation’s LTER Network, where scientists conduct long-term ecological research in a broad array of ecosystems. Dr. Doran studies the lakes of the Dry Valleys. His team collects long-term data on the physical and chemical conditions within the lakes and relates them to biological diversity and processes. Ms. Ellwood was part of a SCUBA diving crew working under the lake ice to collect information about the conditions on the bottom of the lake (benthos).

Most of the time, prevailing winds cause a huge area of the Beaufort Sea to circulate in a clockwise (anticyclonic) direction; this circulation is know as the Beaufort Gyre. The Beaufort Gyre contains the major reservoir of fresh water stored in the Arctic Ocean, and learning more about how the Beaufort Gyre accumulates and releases fresh water as conditions change will improve understanding of ocean circulation in the Arctic Ocean.

The Beaufort Gyre team measured ice thickness, ocean temperature, salinity, and bottom pressure by deploying and retrieving bottom-tethered moorings. Other moorings, known as ice-tethered profilers, were attached to the sea ice to observe and broadcast ocean properties in real time. The Beaufort Gyre Expedition was part of the Joint Ocean Ice Study being conducted on a Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker in collaboration with scientists from the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Canada and JAMSTEC in Japan. The research team has worked in this area on annual cruises with scientists from Canada, the U.S., China, and Japan since 2003. Click here to go to the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project Page.

An international team of American, Japanese, and Russian researchers and students examined the 5,000-year history of human-environmental interactions in the Kuril Island chain of Russia. The team combined studies of archaeology, geology, paleoecology, oceanography, and climatology to investigate the records of human settlement and abandonment on the Islands. They also surveyed the geologic evidence of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, past vegetation, marine conditions, and climatological evidence of past temperature, sea ice, and storminess. The research team traveled by boat to a number of islands to dig archaeological pits, sample soils, and searched for buried artifacts and clues to past activity on the islands. The objectives of the project included understanding the environmental conditions of the past and estimating the degree of human vulnerability and resilience to both sudden and gradual environmental changes. For more information about the Kuril Biocomplexity Project, check out the project website here.

As part of an ongoing project to document ancestral burials near Barrow, Alaska, an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, physical anthropologists, geomorphologists, and community members worked together to excavate the Nuvuk cemetery and village at Point Barrow. The cemetery dates back at least 1200 years, contains several hundred shallow burials, and is rapidly eroding into the Arctic Ocean. The remains are likely to add significantly to our understanding of the ancient inhabitants of the Arctic, the evolution of their cultures, and their relationships to contemporary populations. Local high school students served as field and laboratory staff members on the project.

The team traveled to Svalbard, Norway, located in the High Arctic, to investigate how high latitude glaciers, melt-water streams, and sedimentation in lakes and fjords respond to climate change. The Svalbard region has been marked by the retreat of glaciers, reductions in sea ice, and measurable warming throughout the Holocene period, and more specifically during the last 90 years. The Svalbard archipelago has preserved geologic records of climate change since the last ice age and into the 20th century, which made it an ideal location for this study.