Now that my graduate student exams are over (and I am officially on my way to getting my PhD!), I can really kick into high gear and start preparing for the upcoming field season. We leave in less than a week, which is crazy to think about.
Yesterday I received an email from the organizational people at Raytheon Polar Services Company (who run the logistics and day-to-day activities of the United States Antarctic Program) confirming my flights to New Zealand, my accommodations for the few days that I will be in New Zealand, and my scheduled flight down to McMurdo Station. One step closer to the seclusion of the Antarctic Dry Valleys!
I figured I would write a little about the other people in my group. Our "head honcho" is Dr. Mike Wyatt, an assistant professor here at Brown University who's grant from the National Science Foundation is paying for our trip down to Antarctica. Mike led our group down there last year, but will not be joining us this coming season.
Jay Dickson is a researcher here at Brown and a veteran of several field seasons in the Dry Valleys. Last year, his experience helped make the season go a lot smoother, and so it is good to have him coming back down with us this year.
David Hollibaugh Baker came in with me as a graduate student starting in 2008. This will be his first time down in Antarctica where he will be doing detailed topographic mapping of the surfaces throughout the dry valleys.
J.R. Skok is another graduate student in our department who is making his first trip to Antarctica with us. He will be looking at some recent volcanic activity in the dry valleys.
Sylvain Piqueux is a post-doctoral researcher at Arizona State University who will be using a thermal infrared camera to see how rocks and soils heat up and cool down throughout the course of the Antarctic day and night. This is his first time to Antarctica as well.
Dr. Jim Head is a veteran of several Antarctic field seasons as well and will be joining us a little later in the field season. His work focuses on terrestrial analogs to Mars.
Dr. Jack Mustard is also joining us a bit later in the season along with Jim. Jack is a spectroscopist who looks at how we can study land surfaces from orbit. He will also be heavily involved in looking at some of the recent volcanics throughout the region with J.R. Skok.
So for the first three weeks or so, it will just be me, Jay, David, J.R., and Sylvain in our camp. Once Jim and Jack arrive, our camp will quickly become much larger, but we will also have several projects going on at the same time, so it shouldn't be too hectic.
Here's a map of the places that we camped last year (yellow dots) and the places that we are planning on camping this year (blue dots). The first place that we plan on camping this year is the blue dot in Wright Valley. Then we plan on moving to the Victoria Valley site, then to the one just south of Victoria Valley (in a place called Bull Pass), and then finally ending our season in Taylor Valley. Each of these locations has a lot of really interesting geology that we plan on studying, so it should be a very interesting trip.
Altighty, time to get back to work on some additional field plans, so I will end here. I will update at least one more time before we head out to New Zealand next Tuesday. Adios!
Mark
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