RedParka: Data! Data!

The liquid water that the LTER scientist want to sample exists below the permanent ice cover of the dry valley lakes.

To access this water we must drill through quite a bit of ice, often 10 to 25 feet! We do this all with a “Jiffy Drill” much like you would use to go ice fishing on Echo Lake...only with a lot more flights

We end up with a four inch hole. But in order to fit our instruments and sampling equipment down the hole we melt it out with a “hotsy.” Now the hole is about three feet across.

Now its time to get down to business and start collecting data! To the right is our PAR sensor, this instrument measures how much sunlight makes it through the ice cover and enters the water column. So we can learn how much light energy is available to the microorganisms in the water column.

Business end of the PAR sensor.

The Limno team melts out their hole.

Now that’s an impressive drill!

Getting to work with the Jiffy.

Cartoon schematic of the dry valley lake system.

Data! Data!

The Collection Process:

On some lakes you can just take a boat out to collect water. Think about how you collected your data for Echo Lake. The field teams that are part of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project do not have it quite that easy... Learn more about the process and then get your hands on some of the actual data!

Deploying instruments on Lake Fryxell.

We deploy instruments outside, in full sunlight, to measure how much ambient sunlight can penetrate the thick ice cover and reach the water below versus how much is reflected back and does not make it into the water column.

Many measurements must be made under cover. We set up a polar haven over one of our holes to filter out the strong Antarctic sun. Microorganisms that live under the thick ice cover are adapted to very low levels of light. When you come out of a dark movie theater into broad daylight, isn’t it a shock: “bright light!” This is similar to the shock the Antarctic lake microbes would experience if we were to expose them to the bright surface light.

West Lake Bonney polar haven ready for action.

Here you see the inside hole that is protected from the harsh surface light. We deploy instruments through this hole and use a Niskin bottle to collect water at depth throughout the water column.

Niskin bottle emerges from the depths of Lake Bonney with our hard earned water sample!

Members of the limno team fill sample jars with water.

Our precious water samples are loaded up and returned to the camp labs.

Inside the labs we spend a lot of time watching water drip!

Now that you know more about how we collect data for the lakes in the dry valleys; let’s see what we can learn from it. Below are excel spreadsheets with real data from West Lake Bonney, Antarctica and Echo Lake, Vermont. The Lake Bonney data set has graphed examples.

ENJOY!