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Monday, 09 February 2009 05:03
Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic: EBA
EBA is a complex interdisciplinary project involving over 40 research groups from approximately 22 nations, as well as links to the Arctic research community. Its work crosses traditional disciplinary divides within biology, in particular working across the marine and terrestrial realms. EBA has multiple aims reflected in its structure of 5 work packages. At a broad scale, these packages are aimed at understanding how the various ecosystems of Antarctica are structured and function, what historical processes have shaped them to be as they are now, what evolutionary processes have taken place in the Antarctic environment and, in turn, what that tells us about the environment itself. Finally, in the context of parts of Antarctica currently facing the fastest rates of environmental change on ...
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News And Announcements
Thursday, 05 February 2009 16:08
Kinnvika: Arctic warming and impact research - Change and variability of Arctic systems
http://ipy.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_k2&id=1997&view=itemPress release: Kinnvika - Arctic warming and impact research - Change and variability of Arctic systems, with focus on Nordaustlandet, Svalbard Kinnvika is a project within the International Polar Year 2007–2008 that focuses on Arctic warming and impact research. Its a multinational and multidisciplinary initiative to enhance the understanding of the Arctic climate systems, to monitor environmental change due to global climate warming and to study effects of human activity in the Arctic. Kinnvika is also a logistic platform for scientists to manage research, with a base at the old Kinnvika station in Svalbard. There are 25 working packages in the project and the science involves several disciplines in the Earth Sciences including studies among others on ...
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Tuesday, 27 January 2009 06:58
Press release: Polarstern expedition “LOHAFEX” can be conducted
Bremerhaven, 26 January 2009. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association can conduct the ongoing Polarstern expedition "LOHAFEX". Independent scientific and legal reviews sought by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety concluded that the iron fertilisation experiment LOHAFEX is neither against environmental standards nor the international law in force. There are thus no ecological and legal reasons to further suspend the iron fertilisation experiment LOHAFEX.
Reacting to the positive news from the Federal Ministry of Research Dr. Karin Lochte, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, said: “We are glad that the experts have fully con...
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Wednesday, 11 February 2009 16:53
First Antarctic Subglacial Lake Entry on the Horizon
(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...
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Tuesday, 27 January 2009 01:01
After Fifty Years The Gamburtsev Mountains Emerge
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...
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IPY Blogs
Thursday, 12 February 2009 14:01
The NOMAD Expedition - Studying social change in the Russian far north
Press release: The NOMAD Expedition - Studying social change in the Russian far north
(Kola Peninsula, NW Russia)
Read more about Dr. Vladislava Vladimirova, Prof. Yulian Konstantinov and Dr. Joachim Otto Habeck, three researchers working with NOMAD.
Beautiful images from the expedition in high res
The NOMAD Expedition (March 2007-February 2008) followed the annual migration of a reindeer herd in the central pa...
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Monday, 19 January 2009 07:10
Past Permafrost Records in Arctic Siberia
By Lutz Schirrmeister, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. Text in German below
1
Two joint Russian-German land expeditions to the Dimitrii Laptev Strait (Bol’shoy Lyakhovsky Island, Oyogos Yar coast) and to the lower Kolyma River (Duvanny Yar site) were carried out as part of the IPY project "Past Permafrost records in Arctic Siberia" (ID 15) with 10 and 6 participants during the summers of 2007 and 2008, respectively.
Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI, Potsdam), the Russian Centre of Arctic and Antarctic Research (AARI,...
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Tuesday, 13 January 2009 21:19
LOHAFEX: An Indo-German iron fertilization experiment in the Southern Ocean
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...
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Saturday, 27 December 2008 08:54
The Polar Rubics
In order to move work teams to the AGAP camps we must move everyone through the South Pole in order to acclimatize to the high altitude. This has presented a bottleneck of sorts, and along with other delays is putting the project considerably behind schedule.
With equipment calibrated and people antsy to move out of McMurdo the next focus is how to move people through the next short stop at South Pole. A spreadsheet has been made and people have been moved back and forth on the sheet in response to weather delays and changing shifting. For days people have had bags sorted and checked waiting...
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Thursday, 18 December 2008 04:43
Ready, set, wait
For several years we have been preparing for what seems an incredibly small window of a field season. Working as part of a six nation team we have coordinated our equipment, our personnel, our science plans, and our logistics until it seems we will even breath at the appropriate time! Our project, Antarctic Gamburtsev Province (AGAP), will map through the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, imaging the sleeping giant that lies below. This sleeping giant is a European Alp sized mountain range called the Gamburtsev Mountains, discovered 50 years ago by a team of Russian scientists as they traversed across this extensive ice sheet. Di...
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