Directory

Start date:
Mid October 2009
End date:
Mid January 2010
Locations:
Dry Valleys, Lk Bonney
Principle Investigator:
John Priscu
Organisation:
Montana State University Bozeman
State
Montana
Field season overview:
The field team members will begin operations in the Crary Laboratory. After an initial set-up period, the team will travel via helicopter to the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where they will periodically occupy the field camps at Lakes Fryxell, Hoare, and Bonney. The team’s field season will consist of two sampling rotations between these camps. The first rotation will begin at Lake Fryxell in early November, move via helicopter to Lake Hoare the third week of November, and again via helicopter to Lake Bonney the fourth week of November. The second round of sampling will follow the same lake rotation. Members of the field team will travel on foot or take day trips via helicopter from their field camps to other sampling sites in the Dry Valleys, including Lake Vanda and Don Juan Pond to collect water samples, the Canada Stream to collect water and particulate matter samples, and the ice edge to calibrate a Seabird CTD instrument. Samples will be processed and analyzed at the field camps and at the Crary Laboratory at the end of the field season. Some samples will be shipped to the home institution for further analysis.
The McMurdo Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) projects will continue to investigate the McMurdo Dry Valleys as an end-member ecosystem and focus on the relative roles of legacy and extant processes on current biodiversity and ecosystem structure and function. This project will continue long-term measurements of the biological, chemical, and physical properties of McMurdo Dry Valley lakes and lake ice, with special emphasis on LTER core-research areas.