About this Blog

This blog is dedicated to a research expedition to the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. Through field mapping of geomorphic evidence, sample collection, and cosmogenic nuclide concentration measurements in the Noble Gas Lab at Harvard, we hope to better understand the behavior of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet during Miocene (~23 to 5 million years ago) and Pliocene (~5-1.8 mya) times. The Early Pliocene is the most recent period in which global temperatures were significantly warmer than the present, therefore providing us with a potential analog for a warming climate. This research is generously funded by the NSF Polar Science Program.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Home Sweet Home

One final post for all our faithful readers. You will be happy to know that we're are all back where we came from: Rob is in Wellington, I'm in Cambridge (England), and Robert and Jenny are back at Harvard. 

All in all, this entire expedition has been an amazing experience. We were exposed to active research in a relevant and exciting scientific question, experienced the ambiance of scientist-filled McMurdo, were awed by the staggeringly stunning Dry Valleys, and gained valueable knowledge about just how a field expedition is run. 

Unfortunately, results from this fieldwork won't be in for months to years. But fieldwork is only part of this research - the data is what we're really looking for. And getting the data takes a lot of processing time. 

On a related note, I ran across a documentary called Ice People - our Olympus Range camp site can be seen at 0:30.


Thanks again for following the blog, and please feel free to post any last comments/questions. We had a great time, and we hope you had funr reading about it.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)