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Pages and Posts Tagged ‘GPS’


Measuring a Glacier’s Motion

By Lucas Beem · January 30, 2010 · comments No comments yet
WHILLANS ICE STREAM, ANTARCTICA-- There are two basic projects that we are working on through our field work in Antarctica. One is looking at changes in the ice surface motion through time. To do this we make three types of GPS measurement... {Read More »}


Returning Home

By John Whiteman · May 26, 2009 · comments 6 comments
LARAMIE, WYOMING-- During last week, the weather steadily turned from cold and overcast to warm and sunny. On the first day of good conditions we launched in the morning and captured a bear shortly thereafter... {Read More »}


Starting at the End of the Road

By John Whiteman · April 16, 2009 · comments 2 comments
DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- When I began thinking about logistics for this project, one of the first questions I had was “How do you get to the Arctic?” I had done field work in wildnerness areas before, but nothing as remote as northern Alaska. For our first season on capturing polar bears... {Read More »}


Our Series of Unfortunate Events

By Adrienne Block · January 30, 2009 · comments 2 comments
AGAP-SOUTH CAMP, ANTARCTICA– On January 6th, we sat around after dinner discussing how miraculous it was that nothing had gone wrong. This clearly was the cosmic queue for everything to go wrong in the next 27 hours... {Read More »}


A Typical Day in an Atypical Place

By Adrienne Block · January 23, 2009 · comments 1 comment
AGAP-SOUTH CAMP, ANTARCTICA– Once we began flying at AGAP, we quickly got into a routine of collecting data, downloading, archiving and running a quality control procedure. We are operating 24 hours a day in two teams... {Read More »}


One Month in the Deep Field, Part 5

By Jake Walter · December 28, 2008 · comments No comments yet
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND-- For about a month, we worked every single day, taking turns cooking for each other (some meals more agreeable than others – there were some complaints about my dishes being too spicy!), sleeping in individual mountain tents... {Read More »}


One Month in the Deep Field, Part 2

By Jake Walter · December 22, 2008 · comments No comments yet
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND-- We spent the first week or so in the deep field visiting GPS stations that were left out on the ice over-winter and setting out passive seismometers. Whillans Ice Stream behaves in a unique way – it slips twice a day in episodes that are linked to the tidal cycle... {Read More »}


Why We Install GPS Systems

By Kelly Carroll · December 7, 2008 · comments 5 comments
DEVERALL ISLAND, ANTARCTICA-- The POLENET project installed their newest high-precision GPS system on Deverall Island, Antarctica. These GPS systems tell us how much the ground underneath the ice sheet is moving upward... {Read More »}


Life on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

By Jake Walter · November 25, 2008 · comments 2 comments
WHILLANS ICE STREAM, ANTARCTICA-- In this audio dispatch, I describe our first week in our field camp on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Hear about our research on lakes under the glaciers and get a slice of life as a remote polar scientist... {Read More »}


Tango 1 and the Air We Breathe

By Kelly Carroll · November 25, 2008 · comments No comments yet
MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- We have been preparing for a week to move to our deep field location, Tango 1. Tango 1 is a camp deep in the Transantarctic Mountains about 800 miles from the McMurdo Station. This is going to be a completely new Antarctic experience for me... {Read More »}

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