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This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.
Antarctic Research Season to Highlight Seal Ecology, Microscopic Life, Cosmic OriginsIn one of the world's largest annual deployments of scientific researchers, more than 800 hundred scientists from universities and other institutions across the United States will travel to Antarctica in the coming months during the U.S. Antarctic Program's 1999-2000 austral summer research season.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the federal agency that funds and manages the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), will support 150 research projects involving 826 researchers in the region this field season. Research will be conducted in the earth sciences, glaciology, biology, medicine, oceanography, meteorology, astrophysics and aeronomy (studies of the upper atmosphere). The field season begins in late October and stretches through February. The USAP operates three year-round research stations (McMurdo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole and Palmer on the Antarctic continent) as well as two research vessels (the Nathaniel B. Palmer and the Laurence M. Gould). The USAP also conducts collaborative research with the Antarctic programs of other nations. Attachment: Highlights of NSF's 1999-2000 Antarctic Research Season See also: U.S. Antarctic Program Fact Sheet (http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/99/fs_usap.htm)
Highlights of NSF's 1999-2000 Antarctic Research SeasonHighlights of NSF's 1999-2000 Antarctic Research Season. The descriptions include the projected time period that the research will be carried out in the field (if scheduled) and the name and institutional affiliation of the project's principal investigator. INTERNATIONAL TRANS-ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION (ITASE):
ITASE is a multi-disciplinary approach to global-change
research that integrates meteorology, remote sensing,
ice coring, surface glaciology, and geophysics and
is part of the overall West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)
Program. The U.S. ITASE general objectives are to
determine the variability of West Antarctic climate
and the environmental variability in West Antarctica
over the last 200 plus years. U.S. ITASE is coordinated
through the science management office located at the
University of New Hampshire. The university coordinates
the eight funded U.S. science projects that comprise
the U.S. ITASE. Researchers from Arizona, Minnesota,
New Hampshire, and Ohio will be participating in U.S
ITASE activities this year. Experiments will include
radar studies of bedrock underlying the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet; high-resolution radar profiling of snow
and ice stratigraphy; and glaciochemistry. ANTARCTIC PACK ICE SEALS: The pack ice that
surrounds Antarctica contains at least 50 percent
of the world's seal population. As a group, these
seals are the dominant predators in Southern Ocean
ecosystems. Fluctuations in their abundance, growth
patterns, life histories, and behavior provide a potential
source of information about environmental variability
in and around Antarctica. As part of an international
project, in which USAP is participating, researchers
will count seals from the air and determine species
distribution, attach radio and satellite transmitters
to the animals to monitor their behavior, and attempt
to determine the animals' prey preferences. This will
require for the first time that the research vessel
Nathaniel B. Palmer carry helicopters to assist in
the research. CAPE ROBERTS PROJECT: Evidence that cataclysmic
volcanism rocked Antarctica some 21 million years
ago was produced last field season by the Cape Roberts
project, an international effort involving scientists
from the United States, New Zealand, Italy, the United
Kingdom, Australia and Germany. Cape Roberts drilling
will continue for the third season this year. The
team will attempt to collect cores from the Ross Sea
floor by drilling through sea ice into the underlying
sea floor. Ice at least 1.5 meters thick is needed
to serve as a drilling platform. Sediments and fossils
in the drill core should help provide information
about conditions 25-70 million years ago, and fill
in gaps missing from knowledge of the Earth's climate.
During this interval of time, the first ice sheets
in Antarctica began to form. This period is particularly
important scientifically as it covers a period in
the planet's history when Earth last experienced temperatures
as warm as those that are expected to occur over the
next few centuries as a result of greenhouse warming.
Work also will begin this season on analysis of materials
drilled in previous years of the project. MICROBES AT THE SOUTH POLE: Although associated
in the public mind with images of vast penguin colonies
– which exist only on the continent's temperate
coast – most of Antarctica is a frozen desert,
devoid of life except at the microscopic level. Researchers
this year will attempt to determine the species and
abundance of microscopic algae in permanent ice and
snow and will study the microbes' metabolic activity
and molecular biology to try to understand how they
live and how they got there. How life can exist in
such incredibly harsh conditions: the Pole is in total
darkness most of the year and average low temperatures
in winter routinely drop as low as minus 80 degrees
Fahrenheit. Their findings may have implications for
studies of how life may survive in extreme environments
elsewhere in the solar system. ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS AT THE SOUTH POLE: The atmospheric conditions at the South Pole make it a world-class astronomical observatory. Several projects will be conducted this year. They include:
CONSTRUCTION AT AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTH POLE STATION: Modernization and upgrading of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station continues this season. The existing station is 20 years old and has exceeded its design life. The South Pole Modernization Project (SPMP), a $128-million initiative, will replace the existing station by 2005. Construction crews worked over the austral winter to complete the interior construction of a new garage and machine shop at the station. Work will begin this summer to prepare the foundations for a replacement laboratory – which will be built on supports above the ice cap – in the station's "dark sector," an area that is shielded from visible light and electromagnetic radiation which would interfere with astronomical research conducted at the Pole. Construction also will begin on the exterior of a new power plant. The power plant's interior will be completed during the upcoming austral winter. The reconstruction project is on schedule and within budget. NSF South Pole Program Contact: Jerry Marty, facilities construction, operations and maintenance manager, (703) 306-1032. Editors: Digital images of architect's renderings of the new station are available through the media contact listed above. Research planned for the 1999-2000 field season runs the gamut from the physiology of deep-diving penguins and how they survive in frigid waters to using long-range balloons as airborne platforms to study solar radiation. To find out if an institution or scientist in your area is conducting research in Antarctica this season, contact the media representative.
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Once in the field, research teams will undertake a
range of projects, including: investigating the ecology
of microbes that survive at the South Pole; studying
the composition of a continental sheet of ice that
covers West Antarctica and attempting to predict its
future from its past behavior; and observing the Earth's
climate of eons ago, as reflected in materials collected
by drilling into the seabed around the continent.
The annual research season begins with a massive airlift
of the researchers and their support equipment from
Christchurch, New Zealand to Antarctica, and is designed
to make maximum use of the few months of relatively
mild weather and the perpetual daylight on the southernmost
continent during the austral summer. Geographic isolation,
pristine air and other environmental conditions make
Antarctica a unique, world-class laboratory for studying
subjects ranging from the evolution of new species
to the evolution of galaxies.
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