The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 2/9/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy of Diana Wall

For two months CSU researcher Diana Wall and her team of scientists lived at the bottom of the world, in cold weather and constant sunlight.

The team of eight university researchers, including five from CSU, participated in a six-week soil ecosystem research project in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

Wall, a biology professor, has been traveling to Antarctica since 1989 to participate in fieldwork. The trip was her 19th.

The group consisted of Wall; two CSU graduate students, Karen Seaver and Tracy Smith; two CSU postdoctoral students, Breana Simmons and Uffe Nielsen; and three Brigham Young University researchers, Nick Demetras, a graduate student; Byron Adams, a molecular evolutionary biologist and his doctoral graduate student, Bishwo Adkihari.

The team utilized their time conducting lab research at the McMurdo Station located on Ross Island and doing fieldwork and collecting samples in the Dry Valleys.

"Since the field season is so short and that is all the time we get down there for the year, there is a lot to be done and little time to do it," said Tracy Smith, a CSU graduate student.

"The research that we are doing is so interesting and the people are so passionate about it, though, so it really drives the atmosphere and makes it a pretty intellectually stimulating experience," Smith said.

The project aimed to characterize the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of the communities that inhabit the continent, focusing mainly on the biodiversity of the aquatic animal nematodes.

The research conducted was part of the Long Term Ecological Research project to learn about the earth's global systems and climate changes in different areas of the world.

"Combined with the research of other LTER team members, ecological dynamics in the Dry Valleys can be compared with other regions, especially arctic and arid ecosystems," said Karen Seaver, a CSU graduate student.

"Also, Antarctica is an important area of study for climate change research, and the Dry Valleys provide a unique system in order to study the biotic and abiotic effects in soils, lakes, streams and glaciers," she added.

The researchers were exposed to conditions that varied from 24 hours of sunlight and spending nights in very isolated areas, including areas that were a 40-minute helicopter ride away from civilization.

"It definitely felt like we were pretty isolated from the rest of the world and almost on our own little planet," Smith said. "So being disconnected in that way was a big difference."

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools