Lake Hoare Day 1 For our first full day at Lake Hoare we made the most of it and set out to begin a new experiment. We are attempting to answer the question of how soil microbial communities vary in proximity to rocks in the Dry Valley. It is hypothesized that we will find very different communities
During the past week the weather finally lifted and we went to work, pulling twelve to fifteen hour days. In four days we serviced, an unheard of, ten sites. Quite amazingly, on some days we serviced three stations. We now have only five sites remaining. As we fly from site to site, the amount of
This one hour webinar is a great look at the PolarTREC 2013 Arctic expeditions. Each teacher presents a little about the research projects, implementation in the classroom, and outreach into communities.
We arrived at Lake Hoare this morning. The flight was about 50 kilometers west of McMurdo over the sea ice that formed over the winter. Trapped within the sea ice were icebergs that had broken off from the ice shelf and froze in place before making it to the open water. Lake Hoare is an established
Antarctica is the coldest, driest place on Earth with a fairly limited number of native species which have adapted to these extreme conditions over millions of years. As a result, it's not very likely that a non-native species would survive there . . . right? Actually ever since exploration and exploitation of the Antarctic region began in the 1800's
Our team of three should be heading out to the Lake Hoare field station tomorrow. I will try to keep the posts on schedule but the internet is not as reliable in this area. It might also mean that when there is a connection the photos will be smaller and less plentiful. Thanks for your interest.
Hurry Up and Wait Having completed all of the trainings, except for a 10 minute course on lab safety, we started to prep for our field deployment on Wednesday morning. For our group it means gathering the gear necessary to complete our science and stay reasonably comfortable while we are in the
Happy Camper If you have ever wondered what it is like in Antarctica I can tell you, it is full of training. You have to relearn how and when to do a lot of things. Eat, sleep, drink, go to the bathroom, drive a truck, sleep outside, even something as simple as tossing out a candy wrapper is more
Welcome to Tom's Lab! After a long six hour drive from Ames to Milwaukee yesterday afternoon, we awoke bright and early in our hotel room and headed to the UWM campus. Neal, Reba, and myself met James, Libby, and Tom up in the Geomorphology Lab to accomplish our tasks for the day: * conduct a
Researcher Egbert Schwartz and PolarTREC teacher Justin Kendhammer will travel to the Dry Valleys of Antarctica in search of life in the seemingly barren soil. One of the questions they will attempt to answer is whether microbes in the soil are native to Antarctic soil or whether they have been blown onto the continent from elsewhere in the world.
