|
November 2009
|
|
2008-09 November Team
The nzTABS 09-10 field season will kick off with a team of twelve members, including microbial ecologist, invertebrate biologists, and lichenologists, arriving in the Dry Valleys in late November. The field team will first retrieve monitoring equipments (i.e., iButtons, weather stations, and time-lapse cameras) set up during the last field season and download the recorded data. The equipments will then be re-deployed in order to capture environmental data during the three-month field season.
Similar to last season, we will have two main camps in Miers and Garwood valleys where the main field teams will be based. There will also be sub-camps on Marshall Ridge (between Garwood and Marshall valleys) and Kahiwi Maihao Ridge (between Marshall and Miers valleys), allowing the lichen teams easier access to the lichen-rich areas, which were under-sampled during the last field season due to weather issues. The November field team will also carry out preliminary assessment of tiles that need to be sampled by the January team and help guide the sampling efforts.
The overarching theme of this field season is understanding how biological activity changes in the Dry Valleys during the course of the austral summer. It is translated to actual fieldwork through a series of experiments to be set up in the Dry Valleys, including the monitoring of select habitats and experiments to examine how microbial communities respond to changes in nitrogen availability and local mineralogy over time. Most importantly, two of the November team members will stay in the field through to the end of January to allow continuous monitoring of activity and sample preservation/extraction. By examining the question of how Dry Valley biota change during the austral summer using various physiological and molecular techniques, we hope to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the Dry Valley ecosystem transitions from the largely dormant state in autumn/winter/spring to the relatively productive summer.
Lastly, the nzTABS team will work closely with our American collaborators to set up an unprecedented large-scale experiment involving the diversion of glacier streams in the Miers Valley. This will allow us to examine how biota in the productive and highly responsive hyporheic zone react to the melting of glacial ice in the summer, one of the most important events in determining primary production in the Dry Valleys.
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
