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Victoria University Antarctic Research Expedition Science and Logistics Reports 2000-01: VUWAE 45
2. Proposed Programme
2. Proposed Programme
Due to re-organisation of PICO (Polar Ice Coring Office, now Ice Core Drilling Service), the original plan of this season 'Holocene Glacial Ice - a Continuous Paleothermometer' has been altered, with the deep drilling (~240m) at Victoria Lower Glacier (VLG) postponed until season 2001/2002. Instead we introduce some of the modules planned for our third field season; 'Ancient Ice Deposits -Windows into the Past'. The remaining project outline has been followed as proposed.
Hence the main emphasis of this year's fieldwork was to conclude the preparation for drilling and interpreting a 10,000 year climate record and to
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investigate the western snout of VLG for the possibility of providing a Pleistocene climate record.
For this we proposed:
- to map bedrock topography and internal glacial structures of VLG
- to sample four snow pits on VLG, Baldwin and Wilson Piedmont Glacier
- to recover shallow ice and firn cores from VLG and Wilson Piedmont Glacier
- to measure the current glacial mass balance of VLG
- to record the weather observations from VLG, Baldwin, and Wilson Piedmont Glacier and to compare them with climate records from Marble Point, Lake Vanda and Lake Vida
- to measure current dust flux
- to quantify radiant heat flux in the snow pack and albedo values