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).
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| 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…
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| 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….
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| 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
