Jeremy's Trip to Antarctica: South side of Lake Hoare

I finally made it to the continent of Antarctica!! McMurdo is on Ross Island so it's not technically on the continent. We just returned to MCM from doing field work on the south side of Lake Hoare of the Taylor Valley. It was a lot of work but beautiful.

Byron and I needed to do yet more training this morning, including Dry Valleys training, so we ended up leaving a little later than expected. We got it done and hurried down to the helipad, which is right next to the Crary Lab.

We left within 30 minutes. The helicopter ride was very smooth, but more importantly, it was absolutely beautiful. It takes about 25 minutes each way to fly to the site we were sampling at. Most of the flight is flying over sea ice in McMurdo Sound. However, once you get to Taylor Valley, you can see towering peaks, ponds, streams, lakes, and glaciers. I apologize for all the pictures below, but I felt that I needed to share the view with the rest of you!

Our sampling was two plots-- the Long Term Monitoring (LTM) plots and the Algae plots. The LTM plots are a collection of 64 little plots with a variety of treatments applied to them. The treatments include adding temperature, adding sugar, adding water, etc. and monitoring how soil ecosystem responds to such changes. They have been sampling these sites since the 1994-1995 season. The Algae plot was a lot smaller-- only 16 plots. The treatment involved distributing dried algae into the dirt to see if that changed the soil ecosystem.