{"id":161,"date":"2017-01-19T04:08:32","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T04:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/?p=161"},"modified":"2017-01-19T04:08:32","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T04:08:32","slug":"assessing-sampling-sites-and-testing-techniques-around-the-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/2017\/01\/19\/assessing-sampling-sites-and-testing-techniques-around-the-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Assessing sampling sites and testing techniques around the station"},"content":{"rendered":"
Before we can venture too far away from the station to look for suitable samples, we need to get some safety training and familiarize ourselves with working in Antarctica.\u00a0 Also, just to reassure those that may be worried about our safety, when ever we go sampling in the field away from the station we will have an experienced mountain guide with us.\u00a0 Because we were not yet trained, Monday and Tuesday was spent exploring some potential sampling sites near the station.\u00a0 Tuesday afternoon we had some exciting safety training that we will tell you about in an upcoming post.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The station is built upon a ridge of rocks that is about 2 km long.\u00a0 The further south you walk along this ridge, the more life there appears to be.\u00a0 Close to the station, the rocks are large boulders with very little exposed fine material As we walked further from the station and the rocks got smaller, more evidence of life existed.\u00a0 At first, we were only seeing small bits of orange lichen mixed in with some green moss.\u00a0 But the further along the ridge we went, we starting finding evidence of soil formation and thick black mossy mats. These mats consisted of fine root structures that were about 2 inches (5 cm) thick.One of the major objectives of this work is trying to figure out how active these organisms are.\u00a0 Since the climate and environment here is pretty inhospitable, it is likely that the organisms here grow slowly.\u00a0 So we will likely take samples of these mosses and soils to figure out what organisms are there and how active they are.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
About a 1km north of the station is a large nunatak, or rocks that protrude from the ice.\u00a0 While there is a lot of snow that has accumulated on certain parts on this nunatak, there are also many parts of it that are exposed glacier ice.\u00a0 On warm days, some of this glacier ice melts and drains into small ice covered lakes. \u00a0This melt makes the surface of the glacier quite smooth.\u00a0 And you would think that there is only melt on the surface, however yesterday we took a small ice corer with us and tried drilling into the ice to see what is below the ice.\u00a0 Walking on the ice requires crampons because it is quite slick.\u00a0 Some of the ice is smooth without bubbles, while other places it has pretty fractal patterns.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
One of our objectives is to sample lake water to understand what microbes live there and how old the water is.\u00a0 After experimenting in various parts of the ice, we found that the liquid water was about one meter (3 feet) below the ice surface and there were some cryoconite about 20 cm below the surface.\u00a0 Therefore, we will need to get creative as to how we can sample water that is down a 3 foot hole and only 3 inches in diameter.\u00a0 The hole is not big enough to fit our bottles or our hands, so we will have engineer another means to get the water out of the hole.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before we can venture too far away from the station to look for suitable samples, we need to get some safety training and familiarize ourselves with working in Antarctica.\u00a0 Also, just to reassure those that may be worried about our safety, when ever we go sampling in the field away from the station we will… <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8gMFS-2B","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":179,"url":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/2017\/01\/23\/finding-life-in-antarctica-its-possible\/","url_meta":{"origin":161,"position":0},"title":"Finding life in Antarctica. Its possible!","author":"Lori Ziolkowski","date":"January 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"As the name of this blog implies, the purpose of this trip is look for life on Antarctica in order to understand what conditions support life here.\u00a0 In more temperate climates, we have trees, flowers, bees, animals and of course microbes that life in the soil.\u00a0 Here, where the conditions\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steffi-sampling-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steffi-sampling-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steffi-sampling-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steffi-sampling-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steffi-sampling-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steffi-sampling-1.jpg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":230,"url":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/2017\/02\/04\/bad-karma\/","url_meta":{"origin":161,"position":1},"title":"Bad Karma","author":"Lori Ziolkowski","date":"February 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Since we got here, things have gone mostly well. But like at home there are those days where everything goes wrong and you feel like you have done something bad that caused bad karma. Two days ago was one of those days. We had a big sampling day ahead: visiting\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44,"url":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/2017\/01\/07\/final-preparations-before-departing-south-carolina\/","url_meta":{"origin":161,"position":2},"title":"Final preparations before departing South Carolina","author":"Lori Ziolkowski","date":"January 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This past week has been a flurry of activity preparing for my upcoming trip. The most immediate task was packing my gear for Antarctica. For this project we are collecting a variety of samples.\u00a0\u00a0 Some samples will be of rocks, looking for microbes that can thrive inside the rocks. There\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/2017\/01\/07\/final-preparations-before-departing-south-carolina\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/DSC_0042-2-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":140,"url":"http:\/\/www.science.loriz.ca\/antarctica\/2017\/01\/12\/and-so-it-begins\/","url_meta":{"origin":161,"position":3},"title":"And so it begins\u2026 -Dr. Steffi Lutz","author":"Lori Ziolkowski","date":"January 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\"It feels like it was only yesterday that Lori asked me to join her on her adventure and today I am about to get on the plane to Antarctica. Having been to the cold north several times but never to the south, I didn\u2019t hesitate to say YES! 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