In the beginning of December, I arrived at Byrd camp in the middle of the West Antarctic ice sheet to begin working on the POLENET project, which uses a network of seismic and GPS equipment to reveal the structure of the continent and the behavior of the ice sheet. Byrd Camp is our base as we fly to sites around the continent where previous teams have installed stations. The remote camp is home to about 35 people. This includes the scientists working on POLENET, pilots from Kenn Borek Air who fly the Twin Otter and Basler airplanes to our sites, and a hard-working camp staff made up of weather observers, kitchen staff (who happen to be excellent cooks!), and people who do daily tasks around camp.

Camp itself is made up of several semi-permanent tents that house the galley, washroom (aka Byrd Bath), science equipment, and pilot sleep quarters, plus a meeting tent where we can watch movies and hold science lectures. Most of us sleep in "tent city," a big plot of mountain tents that is further away from the loud, heavy equipment used at camp.

Byrd camp, my home sweet home in the Antarctic.

Each evening, the POLENET team gathers to figure out where we want to fly the following morning. The process is a little tricky because in order to fly, the weather must be good every step of the way: at Byrd camp, at the site we are flying to (which could be as far as 600 miles from Byrd), and at a fuel cache along the route in case the plane needs to re-fuel during the trip. If the weather forecast does not look good at any of these places, we'll be grounded.

To make things more complicated, the weather in Antarctica fluctuates rapidly, and the plan that we develop each night must often change in the morning when the pilots get an updated forecast. This makes for some hectic mornings of getting the right people and equipment organized to fly because the planes can only hold a certain amount of weight and the equipment needed varies from site to site.

While at Byrd, I visited six seismic sites. Some were only temporary stations that were installed a few years ago and needed to be removed completely from the ice. At other sites that are more permanent, we collect stored data and perform maintenance that will keep the stations running for another year. Although the setup of a seismic site may not look like much on the surface of the snow, inside all the buried boxes is an intricate suite of equipment that will record earthquakes from around the world. The following picture is of a temporary site that we had to completely dig out and remove.

Digging out a temporary site...or preparing a five-star snow fort?

On the right side of the photo you can see a circular red dome. Under this dome is the actual seismometer, which is insulated in a foam box and buried to shield it from the wind. The sensor is extremely delicate and is composed of three masses in a spring-like system, each one positioned in order to record ground motion in either the east-west, north-south, or up-down direction. A cable runs from the sensor through the snow and into the orange box on the left side of the photo, where it connects to a piece of equipment called a datalogger. The datalogger records these movements as data that can be viewed on a computer. Several times a day, the datalogger will transfer the digitized data to a small box called a baler that contains memory sticks. When we visit a seismic site, we can remove the baler to get all of the seismic data recorded over the last year or two.

Inside the Little Orange Box.

But how do we keep this station powered up and running all year long in the harsh Antarctic weather? In the back of the station photo you can spot a set of three solar panels. A cable runs from these solar panels through the snow and into the orange box, where it is connected to a power module. The datalogger is also connected to this power module, along with 10 car batteries. During the six months of sunlight in Antarctica, referred to as austral summer, the solar panels keep the car batteries charged, providing power for the station. During austral winter when there is no sunlight, the batteries provide enough power to keep the station running. Just for comparison, when we install sites in other parts of the world we only need one car battery because the solar panels receive sunlight every day.

You also might notice an antenna on top of the solar panels. This is a GPS antenna that provides the time at the station. Without extremely accurate timing down to about a hundredth of a second, our data will be useless because we won't know how long it takes seismic waves from an earthquake to reach the station.

When everything functions correctly, we get excellent data. Below you'll see a signal from the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, recorded at one of our seismic sites called Siple Dome. You can see how the earthquake looks on the up-down, north-south, and east-west components of the seismometer. We will use this data, along with data from many other earthquakes around the world, to make a map of the structure of the earth beneath Antarctica. Here's hoping that the rest of the data collected this season looks as good!

The March 11, 2011 earthquake, as seen by a POLENET station.

After boarding three commercial flights, one Air Force C17, and traveling for nearly 33 hours, I finally arrived in one of the most remote places on Earth: Antarctica. For the next five weeks, I will be based out of a small field camp in the western part of the continent called Byrd (named after the great Antarctic explorer Richard Byrd) to begin working on part of a project called POLENET, or the Polar Earth Observing Network. This particular project involves collecting GPS and seismic data that will help answer questions about the structure of the continent, the behavior of the Antarctic ice sheet, and how these may be related. My role will be to work primarily with the seismic instrumentation in West Antarctica, helping to collect data and perform any necessary maintenance on already installed instruments.

Your correspondent, officially a Happy Camper.

You may be thinking this all sounds interesting and exciting, but how exactly do earthquakes help us learn about the structure of Antarctica? Seismology is not strictly the study of earthquakes. Seismologists also use seismic waves from earthquakes to study the Earth. Just like an X-ray will expose details of the body invisible to the human eye, the behavior of seismic waves expose details of the Earth from the shallowest crustal layers all the way down to the core of our planet.

When an earthquake occurs, seismic waves travel through the Earth and are recorded at seismic monitoring stations. These waves move at different speeds depending upon the type of material they are traveling through. For example, a seismic wave will slow down when traveling through warmer layers. Seismologists can figure out how fast a wave is moving through different parts of the Earth by looking at the wave arrival time at a network of seismic stations. The more stations there are, and the more densely they are sited, the more detail can be observed about the underlying structure. By installing seismometers in Antarctica, we are able to figure out how the crust differs all points all across the continent.

Why do we care? It is important to understand the interaction between the ice sheet and the underlying bedrock. Think about placing a heavy weight on top of a thick sponge. The weight will create a depression in the sponge. But what happens when you remove this weight? The sponge will bounce back to its original shape. The Earth's crust behaves in a similar way, but areas of warm, weak crust depress much more than areas of strong, rigid crust when put under the same weight. As the ice melts and relieves some of the weight on the continent, the crust begins to move vertically like the sponge; that motion is detected by the GPS instruments. By combining seismic data about the type of crust beneath the ice with the GPS data showing the amount of vertical motion each year, geologists can improve their calculations of the scale and rate of ice melt. This has a direct impact on sea-level change. In a time when global warming is a hot topic in science, it is important to figure out how the polar regions of the world are being affected and what that may mean for the future.

Before I can travel to Byrd field camp, there are a few things I need to do to prepare for the extreme environment I'll be living in. I have spent this past week at the U.S. base McMurdo going through different training courses, including a snow school that is referred to around here as "Happy Camper." This hands-on two day training takes place on the outskirts of McMurdo, conveniently far enough away to discourage those who may have thoughts of walking back to the cozy base. Throughout the course we learned skills like how to use camping stoves, set up tents, erect snow walls to shelter our tents from the wind, build survival trenches for emergency situations, and operate a high-frequency radio. Although some of the more adventurous "campers" chose to sleep in their survival trenches, I opted to stay in a tent and learned some good tricks for keeping warm in the process. By putting two bottles filled with hot water inside my sleeping bag, I was very comfortable throughout the night and could also keep my hat, gloves, and neck guard warm for the next morning.

To wrap up the training we ran through some scenarios, including how to find a lost team member in the event of a white-out. This involved wearing white buckets on our heads so we were not able to see anything, which I'm sure is always entertaining for the instructors. The camping experience was surprisingly very enjoyable, especially because I had the opportunity to meet a lot of other scientists and learn more about other projects taking place in Antarctica. In the end I'd say I was a very happy camper and am ready to head to Byrd!