Saturday, 26 January 2019

Fieldwork has started !


26/01/2019


Once arrived at the station, we were lucky to have good weather conditions. This allowed us to complete all the needed trainings, such as how to safely drive a snowmobile, use the GPS while traveling on the ice, and what to do in case one falls into a crevasse. A short medical training dealt with some typical injuries related to working in cold conditions. Afterwards, we had five days of intense field work. We went to Pingvinane (PV), Perlebandet (PB), twice to the Dry Valleys (DV) and to the Utsteinen ridge (UT) in order to continue our experiments and sampling we started last year (see map in Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Map of the sampling sites
In January and February 2018, we have selected and sampled a number of habitats which differed in environmental conditions. For example, we sampled lichens and mosses in rock cracks, biofilms on gravel and virtually barren soils to study the microbes living in these environments. In a selection of sites, we installed loggers (i-bottons) which recorded the temperature and the relative humidity every 3 hours over an entire year. This year we have visited these sites to recover these loggers and read out the data. An example of a temperature record looks can be found in Fig. 2. The minimum temperature recorded was -39.8 °C (recorded in PV) and the maximum temperature 17.8 °C (recorded in DV)! One wouldn’t expect such high temperatures, but in areas which are sheltered from the wind and exposed towards the North, the soils can get quite warm in Antarctica…
Fig. 2. Temperature measured from February 2018 till February 2019 by a i-button, showing that the microclimate in sampling sites can be quite different from the air temperature (always negative)

In addition to studying these different environments, we also have installed  open top chambers (OTCs) and snow fence. They will experimentally alter temperature and snow cover respectively. For more information, see our blog from last year: microbian.bloggen.be.
An update on sampling the soils near the snow fences will follow in a next blog post.
Unfortunately, the wind speed increased today.  Because we need to sample these communities by wearing sterilized latex gloves (see Fig.3), fieldwork is very difficult, if not impossible when the wind is too strong. Latex gloves are definitely not Antarctica-proof….

Fig. 3. Valentina taking samples with latex gloves

While we are not able to go out to sample during the next days, we are preparing two field experiments and test  our sampling protocol in Antarctic conditions near the station.

More news later.... 
Take care, 
Valentina, Elie, Quinten