Back to Cape Town

Today we flew to Novo and spend their one day waiting for the IL76 flight. Although I spent here several days (once 7 days in a row), I still find a strange place to get stuck waiting for your flight. It feels very isolated and there is little you can do. While the Schirmacher oasis (with >50 lakes) is only 12 km away, you need to spend your days near the blue ice field of the airport. We were lucky though: we left Novo around 2 PM and arrived in Cape Town around 10 PM local time. 
The samples are being taking care of by a local courier; I was happy to see these guys, knowing they are in good hands. This will give us, and the Czech colleagues, interesting work to do in the coming months.
Cheers, Elie

Voir Elie en train d'échantillonner les OTC

Ici, dans le cadre du projet AHA, un clip montre Elie en train de changer les senseurs de température et humidité dans les OTC du projet BELDIVA.

Cheers, Annick

Film sur les cryoconites près de la station

Bonjour,
Un enseignant de l'enseignement secondaire flamand est présent à la Station Princess Elisabeth dans le cadre de l'activité AHA-project. Dans des clips vidéo mis sur Youtube, il explique comment les cryoconites se forment, et comment Elie est en train de changer les senseurs de température que Zorigto avait installé l'année dernière.

Cheers, Annick

Too frozen to drill! Bad luck!

I am very disappointed! We finally weren’t able to core the lakes due to the unusually amount of snow cover of this year!

Different camera teams are filming Alain Hubert while he is coring the lake ice

The lakes were completely covered by snow, so we weren’t able to core them; they were simply completely frozen, as were the sediments. Alain drilled holes at several places but we weren’t successful. Hopefully, we will be able to sample these lakes in the future because I strongly believe they hold some nice potential for studying the deglaciation history and the microbial biodiversity of the region. We also did a reconnaissance in Vesthaugen and searched for lakes. While the regions was extraordinary beautiful, we didn’t find any lakes.
Cheers, Elie

Stormy weather on Utsteinen!

Yesterday, (Friday) we experienced our first storm here at Utsteinen (see short movie). 

 

I was happy to spend the day in the comfortable dining room of the Princess Elisabeth Station... Today and tomorrow, it will be still windy, so no weather to go out sampling. Next week, we should be able to sample the other OTCs in Pingvinane and Tanngarden and the lakes in Yobuko Valley. Still a lot of work to do, but we still have 7-8 days.

Cheers, Elie

Recovery of the temperature loggers in the cryoconites

On the 8^th and the 9^th we went to the blue ice field in front of the moraine near Utsteinen Nunatak (blue area on the left side of the picture taken by Koen Meirlan). The aim was to recover the temperature loggers which were placed in two cryoconites by Zorigto Namsaraev. Cryoconites are pockets of liquid water (during summer) just below the surface of glaciers and ice sheets which are covered by a lid of ice of which the thickness can range from a few centimetres to up to 1m depending on the regional climate and the time of year. The liquid water occurs there because rocks, stones, or gravel falls onto the ice surface, capture heat as a result of the absorption of solar radiation. The rocks, stones or gravel subsequently sink into the ice. They capture the sunlight up to a certain depth which results in the presence of liquid water above this substrate. And surprisingly, although cryoconites are situated below ice and within the cold glaciers, they are, together with the lakes in Yubuko Valley (see blog of Zorigto last year) probably one of the ‘warmest’ areas during winter here near Utsteinen. Not a surprise that these small pockets of water are inhabited by microorganisms... Unfortunately, we didn’t find liquid water in the smaller of the two. Also, the logger we retrieved didn’t contain any data. By contrast, the bigger of the two cryoconites contained liquid water and the logger has measured the temperature during winter and summer 2011-2012. 

Best regards, Elie

Hello,

Today (0702/12),  I went sampling the OTCs in Teltet, which is a nunatak (=ice free region within a matrix of ice) near the Princess Elisabeth Station. It only takes 15 minutes by skidoo, but it looks like a different world compared with the busy Utsteinen ridge where people are working to make our stay as comfortable as possible. 

Two journalists from RTL-TVI who are interested in the BELDIVA project and other projects funded by BelSPO and the FWO-Flanders joined us to take some pictures and shoot a movie about the sampling of microbial habitats. I needed to answer some questions in French; quite difficult to be honest (see picture). 

Interview of Elie by journalists of RTL-TVI

 

They also interviewed me about the drilling of Lake Vostok, which is a so called sub-glacial lake. It is covered by the more than 4 km thick ice sheet and was probably isolated from the air more than 15 million years ago. Yesterday, Russian scientists succeeded to drill the lake and sample the lake water; an effort which took more than 20 years. Hopefully the lake isn’t contaminated with bacteria or other microorganisms and kerosene, which sits on top of the lake ice as a result of the drilling of the Vostok Ice core; an important record which enabled scientists to study past climate changes during the past 420000 years. In case the lake was contaminated, this will be regarded as one of the biggest ecological disasters in Antarctica. It would mean that we impacted on a unique ecosystem which was free of anthropogenic influence during its 15 million years history. Let’s hope for the best ! 

http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/382362.aspx?CategoryID=496

Something important I need to mention: today it was (finally) colder than in Belgium J The weather is changing and winter is approaching here…