The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby glaciers. The rocks here are granites and gneisses, and glacial tills dot this bedrock landscape, with loose gravel covering the ground. It is one of the driest places on Earth and is sometimes claimed to have not seen rain in nearly two million years, though this is highly unlikely and several anecdotal accounts of rainfall within the Dry Valleys exist.
The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) is a polar, alpine, and climate research center at Ohio State University founded in 1960.
Canada Glacier is a small glacier flowing south-east into the northern side of Taylor Valley in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It is in the Ross Dependency. Its melting season is in the summer.
Lake Fryxell is a frozen lake 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) long, between Canada Glacier and Commonwealth Glaciers at the lower end of Taylor Valley in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It was mapped in the early 1900s and named during Operation Deep Freeze in the 1950s. There are several forms of algae living in the waters and a weather station located at the lake.
The Drygalski Ice Tongue, Drygalski Barrier, or Drygalski Glacier Tongue is a glacier in Antarctica, on the Scott Coast, in the northern McMurdo Sound of Ross Dependency, 240 kilometres (150 mi) north of Ross Island. The Drygalski Ice Tongue is stable by the standards of Antarctica's icefloes, and stretches 70 kilometres (43 mi) out to sea from the David Glacier, reaching the sea from a valley in the Prince Albert Mountains of Victoria Land. The Drygalski Ice Tongue ranges from 14 to 24 kilometres wide.
Lake Vanda is a lake in Wright Valley, Victoria Land, Ross Dependency, Antarctica. The lake is 5 km (3.1 mi) long and has a maximum depth of 69 m (226 ft). On its shore, New Zealand maintained Vanda Station from 1968 to 1995. At depths of greater than approximately 50 meters, Lake Vanda is a hypersaline lake with a salinity more than ten times that of seawater and more than the salinity of the Dead Sea. Lake Vanda is also meromictic, which means that the deeper waters of the lake don't mix with the shallower waters. There are three distinct layers of water ranging in temperature from 23 °C (73 °F) on the bottom to the middle layer of 7 °C (45 °F) and the upper layer ranges from 4–6 °C (39–43 °F). It is only one of the many saline lakes in the ice-free valleys of the Transantarctic Mountains. The longest river of Antarctica, Onyx River, flows west, inland, into Lake Vanda. There is a meteorological station at the mouth of the river.
The Onyx River is an Antarctic meltwater stream which flows westward through the Wright Valley from Wright Lower Glacier and Lake Brownworth at the foot of the glacier to Lake Vanda, during the few months of the Antarctic summer. At 32 kilometres (20 mi) in length, it is the longest river in Antarctica.
The Wright Valley is a large east–west trending valley, formerly occupied by a glacier but now ice free except for Wright Upper Glacier at its head and Wright Lower Glacier at its mouth, in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It was named by the VUWAE (1958-59) for Sir Charles Wright, for whom the BrAE (1910-13) named the glacier at the mouth of this valley.
Beaufort Island is an island in Antarctica's Ross Sea. It is the northernmost feature of the Ross Archipelago, lying 21 kilometres north of Cape Bird, Ross Island. It is approximately 18.4 km2 in area. It was first charted by James Clark Ross in 1841. Ross named the island for Sir Francis Beaufort, hydrographer to the British Royal Navy.
Don Juan Pond is a small and very shallow hypersaline lake in the western end of Wright Valley, Victoria Land, Antarctica, 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) west from Lake Vanda. It is wedged between the Asgard Range to the south and the Dais Range to the north. On the west end is a small tributary and a rock glacier. With a salinity level of 33.8%, Don Juan Pond is the saltiest of the Antarctic lakes. This salinity causes significant freezing-point depression, allowing the pond to remain liquid even at temperatures as low as −50 °C (−58 °F).
Marble Point is a rocky promontory on the coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica. The United States operates a station at the point. The outpost is used as a helicopter refueling station supporting scientific research in the nearby continental interior, such as the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Dependent upon the weather conditions at the time, helicopters are able to fly in and out of the station 24 hours a day during the summer research season.
Lake Hoare is a lake about 4.2 kilometres (2.6 mi) long between Lake Chad and Canada Glacier in Taylor Valley, Victoria Land, Antarctica. Its surface area measures 1.94 square kilometres (0.75 sq mi). The lake was named by the 8th Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE), 1963–64, for physicist Ray A. Hoare, a member of the VUWAE that examined lakes in Taylor, Wright, and Victoria Valleys.
Lake Bonney is a saline lake with permanent ice cover at the western end of Taylor Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land, Antarctica.
Victoria Valley is an extensive ice-free valley, formerly occupied by a large glacier, extending from Victoria Upper Glacier to Victoria Lower Glacier in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It is one of the larger McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Blood Falls is an outflow of an iron oxide–tainted plume of saltwater, flowing from the tongue of Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarctica.
Antarctica is one of the most physically and chemically extreme terrestrial environments to be inhabited by lifeforms. The largest plants are mosses, and the largest animals that do not leave the continent are a few species of insects.
Barwick Valley is an ice-free valley north of Apocalypse Peaks, extending from Webb Glacier to Victoria Valley in Victoria Land, Antarctica. A large part of the valley has been designated an Antarctic Specially Protected Area because of its pristine condition.
Jill Ann Mikucki is an American microbiologist, educator and Antarctic researcher, best known for her work at Blood Falls demonstrating that microbes can grow below ice in the absence of sunlight. She is a leader of international teams studying study ecosystems under the ice.
Alison Murray is an American microbial ecologist and Antarctic researcher, best known for studying the diversity, ecology and biogeography of Antarctic marine plankton dynamics of the plankton over the annual cycle; and her work demonstrating the existence of microbial life within an ice-sealed Antarctic lake. She studies how microorganisms persist and function in extremely cold and harsh environments, including those that lack oxygen and biological sources of energy.
Lake Washburn is a lake that formerly existed in the Taylor Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. It formed when climatic changes and an expansion of ice caused the flooding of the valley, between 23,000 and 8,340 radiocarbon years ago. Its extent and elevation are unclear but Lake Bonney and Lake Fryxell are considered to be its present-day remnant.
