Glaciology

Dr. Julie Palais Program Manager

I-141-M	NSF/OPP Award 02-30197
Station: McMurdo Station
RPSC POC: Jessie Crain
Research Site(s): Thwaites Camp, Pine Island Camp
Dates in Antarctica: Mid October to early February

Airborne Geophysical survey of the Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica (AGASEA)

Dr. John W. Holt University of Texas Austin Institute for Geophysics jack@utig.ig.utexas.edu http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/agasea

Photo not available.

Deploying Team Members:

Donald D. Blankenship . Hunter Anderson Danque . Theresa Diehl . Irina Filina . John Gerboc . John W. Holt . Scott D. Kempf . Erick Leuro . Anatoliy V. Mironov . David L. Morse . Matthew E. Peters . Thomas Richter

Research Objectives: This project is a collaboration of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of Texas (UTIG). Collectively, the project's primary objective is to determine boundary conditions for the major glacier drainages in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, including ice surface topography, subglacial topography, gravity and magnetic anomalies. Additional objectives of the BAS component will be to collect ground-based measurements of accumulation rate and ice velocity and to collect several short firn cores to complement the results of the US ITASE (International Transantarctic Scientific Expedition) ground traverse conducted during the 2001-2002 field season. The major part of research operations will be a large-scale airborne geophysical survey of the Amundsen Sea Embayment flown with two instrumented Twin Otter aircraft (one USAP, one BAS). There will be two bases of operation: One near the Ross Embayment / Amundsen Embayment ice flow divide and the second on the divide between Pine Island Glacier Basin and “Drainage Basin A.”