Q & A part II

Lake Hoare Camp next to Canada Glacier a.k.a. My Weekend Resort
Blood Falls at the Terminus of Taylor Glacier and a Bluebird Sky

As mentioned in a previous post, I have received some excellent questions from a Computer Tech class at Old Colony High School in Rochester, Massachusetts.  Here's a few Q & A's from those students:

1.  Can the research facility that you work out of be seen from google earth?  If so, what can we use for an address?

McMurdo station can be found using google earth by entering Ross Island, Antarctica in the search bar.  Once the globe rotates to this position, a couple of blue boxes pop up with one being McMurdo Station.  The image quality is not as clear as other parts of Earth, which might be due to a lack of interest and lack of satellites orbiting over the area.  

Another box that pops up is titled Canada glacier, which I sleep about 300 feet away from on the weekends.  We also work at Lake Vanda, which is another link to follow.

2.  In one of your blogs you refer to bottles being cleaned in the "muffle furnace."  What is that?

A muffle furnace is an oven we use to heat glass sample bottle to insure that there is no moisture remaining in the sample bottle.  If moisture remains it will contaiminate the water being collected for dissolved organic carbon (DOC).  We set the oven to 450 degrees Celcius (842 F) for 5 hours and have to wait for them to cool over night.  They are still warm when we removed the in the morning.  We processed 300 bottles and will process about 300 more when we return to McMurdo Station at the end of December.

3.  Does everyone who is stationed in Antarctica live by and respect the Antarctic Treaty?  Who enforces this?

In my experience, everyone lives by and respects the Antarctic Treaty.  We know we are in a place that is unlike any other on Earth and would like to do our best to protect it.  In the Dry Valleys (and all over the continent), any and all spills must be reported to The National Science Foundation, the U.S. governmental body on the ice.  Even if is a tablespoon of gas from the ATV it must be reported immediately with information of how it happened, by who, quantity, and GPS coordinates of where.  Each country who conducts research in Antarctica has a governing body, like NSF, that overseas and insures compliance with the Antarctic Treaty.

4.  If 60% of the waste is recycled, where does the other 40% go?

All waste from the U.S. Antarctic Program, including recyclable, is sent back to the United States on cargo ships.  Of that waste, 60% is recycled in the U.S., such as paper products, plastics, and light metals.  The other 40% is sent to landfills upon return to the States.  Special attention is payed to sorting items correctly and recycling as much as possible.

5.  If the winter population is approximately 200 people, what is the current summer population?

The population of McMurdo Station is roughly 1000 people during the austral summer.  My camp at F6 in the Dry Valleys, there are three people and other camps we visit range in size from about 5 to 15 people, depending on research being conducted.

6.  Are any of the volcanos active?

There is an active volcano in Antarctica that is not far from McMurdo Station.  It's called Mt. Erebus and was one of my first sights I had when I stepped on to the ice a little over a month ago.  It can be view from McMurdo and is an area of scientific focus with condensed gassses and minor eruptions coming from the summit.

Thanks Mrs. Guenette and class for the questions, they were fun to answer!