Ohio State students do what they can to beat winter's icy grip, some fleeing to popular tourist destinations such as Florida, Cancun or the Caribbean. But this winter, two undergraduate researchers are heading so far south it will be summer when they arrive at their destination.
Funded in part by a National Science Foundation grant, April Jacobs and Liz Miller, seniors studying geological sciences, are taking a trip to the frozen continent of Antarctica this December. Although it will be summer there, Jacobs and Miller won't be beating the cold.
"An Antarctic summer is like winter (in Ohio)," Miller said. "It will be around 20 degrees Fahrenheit while we're there, from December to February."
To prepare for the frigid weather, Jacobs and Miller said they will stop in Christchurch, New Zealand, on their way to Antarctica. In Christchurch, the Clothing Distribution Center will provide their team with duffel bags of clothing and equipment.
"They give you basically everything you need to wear," Miller said.
"This is not a vacation - they're going to be working very, very hard," said Berry Lyons, director of the Byrd Polar Research Center located on West Campus, which has employed Jacobs and Miller for more than a year and a half. "When they're out in the field, they'll be living in a not-so-comfortable situation - sleeping in tents."
Receiving around two centimeters of precipitation per year, Antarctica is as arid as the Sahara Desert and is the windiest place on Earth, able to produce gusts of up to 200 mph.
From New Zealand, Jacobs and Miller will fly via military aircraft and land at McMurdo Station, one of the two research stations in Antarctica funded by the National Science Foundation. The outpost is built on the Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island, the southernmost solid ground that ships can access.
Lyons said Jacobs and Miller will help analyze samples for Antarctic research projects dedicated to understanding climate change.
In Antarctica, Miller said she will be using techniques at her current job at the university where she measures levels of bicarbonate, silica and phosphorus in Antarctic watershed samples. These chemicals are some of the basic elements required by living organisms and are good indicators of the amount of living material in an ecosystem.
Jacobs said that her end of the research involves looking at anions and cations in the samples. But her work isn't limited to Antarctic samples. As part of her senior undergraduate thesis and an NSF outreach program, Jacobs sampled the Olentangy and Darby Rivers.
"Basically, I sample water (from the rivers) before Columbus and after it," Jacobs said. When she completes a Web site she is developing, Central Ohio elementary and high school students will be able to download and upload their own sample data and compare it to existing data, including the Antarctic data the team will collect this winter.
"We want it to be a working site for students to be able to learn about environmental geochemistry," Jacobs said. She said she will specifically be corresponding with Blessview Elementary School in Worthington.
By collecting Antarctic ice melt each summer and chemically analyzing the samples, Lyons said levels of life in the Antarctic can be assessed, ultimately indicating the impact of global warming. This, Lyons said, is the main objective of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research Project (MCM-LTER) and what his undergraduate counterparts will mainly be working on.
"It's kind of hard to believe that these valleys (in Antarctica) actually have ecosystems, but they do," Lyons said. "Algae and bacteria live on top of the ice, in the soil and in the streams. These streams flow six to 12 weeks out of the year."
Lyons said this year will be the 13th season they are collecting samples, but said he will also assist Miller with her own undergraduate research dealing with the weathering of Antarctic rocks.
"Weathering is directly correlated to global warming," Miller said. By collecting eight to 10 rock samples from Antarctica's old volcanic cones, Miller said she can look at the rate of physical and chemical weathering in the past five million years. This, she said, will be done by cutting the samples and comparing the interior to the exterior.
"Basically, I'll take a few days ... in a helicopter, I'll jump out, grab some samples, and head back to McMurdo," Miller said.
Despite the two months of intense work that is ahead of them, Jacobs said she and her counterpart will have some downtime to enjoy the landscape.
"In Antarctica there's no shopping malls or grocery stores," Jacobs said. "In your spare time you're seeing natural beauty or just hanging out in the dorms or in social groups at McMurdo."
The opportunity to do research in Antarctica is limited for undergraduates due to it's remote location, but Lyons explained why he chose the two to assist him. He said the reason he chose Jacobs and Miller to do work at the frozen continent was because of their dedication to high-quality work at the Byrd Polar Research Center.
"They're very diligent and dedicated and they've both done a tremendous job," Lyons said. "Some years it's difficult to get everyone down (to Antarctica) who wants to go - NSF is only able to send about 30 people from seven universities," Lyons said. "But it wasn't a hard decision at all."
However, Miller had a different idea of how she and Jacobs were chosen.
"Me and April started bugging him and telling him that we wanted to go," Miller said. "We finally bugged him enough that he said 'OK, if you guys are going to be quiet."
Although Jacobs said she is not permitted to even see penguins, as one requires a special permit, she said that she will be sending her holiday greetings from Antarctica.
"My Christmas cards won't get to the U.S. until January 30th, but I'm sending them anyway," Jacobs said. "Who wouldn't want something postmarked from Antarctica?"
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