ITASC IPY Press Release: 2 February 2009, Vesleskaervet, Antarctica Groundhog Day 2009 marks the deployment of ICEPAC's solar- and wind powered mobile IPY research station in the Dronning Maud Land sector of Antarctica, and the opening of the Antarctic venue of the 2nd Bienal del Fin del Mundo, an exhibition of site-specific art installations produced at the South African Antarctic base SANAE IV during the ITASC project. ITASC Catabatic Experimental Platform for Antarctic Culture (ICEPAC) mobile IPY research station deployed in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica at 71 deg 40.433 S 002 deg 48.700 W, 31 January ...

With all our scientific equipment staged with ANZ in Christchurch, ready to fly down to the Ice, all that remains for me and Alex is to pack a few good books, set our lives in order for the next nine and half months and bid farewell to those around us - the latter possibly being the hardest part of all. Last night, to mark our imminent departure, we met with friends and colleagues from the University of Otago at the Carey’s Bay Hotel, just outside Port Chalmers – the last port of call for many early Antarctic expedition including those of Scott and Shackleton. The hotel is reputedly the location Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s last meal before setting sail from New Zealand on his fateful journey to Antarctica in November, 1910. Although were unable to confirm this story, it did make fo...

(c) National Science Foundation After years of planning, strategizing, and international discussions and debate, what once seemed to be only lofty scientific ambitions are now closer than ever to becoming a reality. Ever since subglacial lakes captured the imagination of scientists and the public more than a decade ago, researchers have dreamed of entering and sampling these alien environments to unlock secrets that might guide us in the search for life elsewhere in our solar system. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research’s (SCAR) Scientific Research Program (SRP) on Subglacial Antarctic Lake Envir...

Photo Credit - AGAP team There were many times in the last two months where it seemed that the Antarctic Continent would win, keeping hidden the extensive landscape of subglacial lakes and mountains beneath the several kilometers of ice on Dome A. All the advance planning and negotiating with program leaders and logistics groups for enough days in the field to run the airborne geophysics were of little importance once we arrived on Antarctica. At this point we were negotiating with the continent herself, and we learned she can drive a hard bargain! The group at AGAP S camp had anticipated...

Subglacial Antarctic Lake Environments (SALE) 2008 Progress Report The SCAR Scientific Research Program (SRP) on Subglacial Antarctic Lake Environments (SALE) made significant advances on several fronts in 2008. SALE promotes, facilitates and champions international cooperation to better understand subglacial aquatic environments in Antarctica. In addition, SALE promotes and advances all aspects of environmental stewardship in research and exploration of these unique settings. SALE is a recognized IPY program under the auspices of the SALE-UNified International Team for Exploration and Discovery (SALE-UNITED) program. The SALE website contains details on all facets of the Program (http://scarsale.tamu.edu/). SALE produces an email digest mailing that circulates weekly...

Overview The IPY sea ice workshop will bring together participants of the SIPEX and SIMBA cruises conducted in the Antarctic in spring 2007, as well as others interested in Antarctic sea ice processes, modelling and remote sensing.  Ground-truthing of remote sensing will be a major emphasis as specific RADARSAT and ICESat missions coincided with the cruises, as well as an archival campaign for Envisat ASAR imagery.  There are currently 35 confirmed attendees. The schedule will allow for parallel breakout sessions to facilitate discussion on topics of interest to workshop participants, and the plenary session on the first day will afford all participants an opportunity to propose discussion topics. One outcome of the workshop will be a final list of papers for the ...

Neil Ross writes: Rather belated greetings from Subglacial Lake Ellsworth (SLE). I had hoped to post something a bit sooner in the season (we have already been here three weeks) but there has been far too much work to do and good weather to do it in. Sorry! Here is the first installment from late last month, more to come... 26-31 December: Last season at SLE we undertook a series of geophysical measurements (seismics and radar) to map the size and depth of the lake, which is located beneath three kilometers of West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This year, the primary goals were the resurvey of the location of 60 metal poles left in the ice surface last season, using a GPS to measure their elevation, how far they had travelled, and in whic...

LOHAFEX: An Indo-German iron fertilization experiment What are the effects on the ecology and carbon uptake potential of the Southern Ocean? Bremerhaven, January 13th 2008. The German research vessel Polarstern is currently on its way to the Southwest Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean. The team of 48 scientists (30 from India) on board left Cape Town on 7th January to carry out the Indo-German iron fertilization experiment LOHAFEX (LOHA is Hindi for iron, FEX stands for Fertilization EXperiment). About two weeks will be required to reach the area and carefully select a suitable location, after which a patch of 300 square kilometres will be fertilized with six tons of dissolved iron. This will lead to rapid growth of the minute, unicellular algae known as phytoplan...

Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing Innovations During the International Polar Year Guest Editors: Dr. Chris Derksen ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) Dr. Paul Treitz ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) We invite contributed papers on the application of remote sensing to polar research. Papers are solicited from all application areas including the marine and terrestrial cryosphere, land cover and ecology, geology, education, outreach, and policy. Contributions from endorsed IPY projects are encouraged, but all submissions dealing with remote sensing of the polar regions will be considered. If you intend to submit a manuscript please contact either of the Guest Editors by email before 1 February 20...

An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente. Italian Translation I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities.

 

 

An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente.



Italian Translation

I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities. I participated in the ARISE – Andrill project during the 2007 October/December expedition in Antarctica (McMurdo Station).

ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) is a multinational collaboration comprised of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators from four nations (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic margin.

The chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent glacial and interglacial changes were in the Antarctic region. Future scenarios of global warming require guidance and constraint from past history that will reveal potential timing frequency and site of future changes.

ANDRILL has established an immersion experience for science educators (ARISE) to facilitate development of mechanisms and materials to effectively connect ANDRILL with the public.

During the 2007-2008 I planned on conducting a geology field trip and museum visits with his classes to observe and understand the geological evolution after the last Ice Period. I planed to use observations of everyday objects like refrigerators, air conditioners, petrol engines... to build intuitive links among entropy and energy, using software models to study the most important connections among the living beings in a habitat. I planed on doing creative science fiction writing with my class, as well as comic strips and drawings set in critical moments of prehistory or in the future, and presenting collected information and findings of the polar research through simple performances.

From Antarctica I worked with some Italian schools on the Polar topics, expecially geology to explain what the Andrill core told to the researchers.

For my pupils I prepared some materials on Antarctica, especially to suggest to them some reflections on the hypothetical influences of the climate changes.

An interesting didactic experience was organized by the Arise team in the McMurdo Station for the workers of the base.

This exibition was created by the group of teachers and scientists who are working in Mc Murdo Station to show and to explain to the other workers and people of the Antarctic base what the significance, the tecnology and the scientific topics of the Andrill project are. For the Arise group it could be a good test of our didactic ideas on a simple itinerary on polar science for pupils. The main challenge: to be able to explain and to show the net of knowledges, the collaborations between different disciplines to understand what happened in the past and what can happen in the future (other informations and photos in http://www.exhibitfiles.org/andrill ).

Some materials (in Italian) are on our school website: http://www.scuolastefanini.it (click on “Antartide” in the upper menu).

During this year in my school we are working on the CO₂ emissions and our carbon footprinters, comparing the “Human habitats” of the pupils of different schools: North Italy, Greece, Poland, Estonia, inside an European project that we have called “SMILe, Science and Mathematics Interactive Learning” (http://smile.kornelowka.com – in progress…).

An article written by Graziano on his experience can be downloaded in both English and Italian.