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An International Plan for Antarctic Subglacial Lake Exploration

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An International Plan for Antarctic Subglacial Lake Exploration AN INTERNATIONAL PLAN FOR ANTARCTIC SUBGLACIAL LAKE EXPLORATION1 John C. Priscu Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717 Robin E. Bell Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York 10964 Sergey A. Bulat Division of Molecular and Radiation Biophysics, Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia J. Cynan Ellis-Evans British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United Kingdom Mahlon C. Kennicutt II Geochemical and Environmental Research Group, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, 77843 Valery V. Lukin Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia Jean-Robert Petit LGGE-NCRS BP96, F-38402 St. Martin D’Hères, Cedex, France Ross D. Powell Department of Geology, Environmental Geosciences, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, 60115 Martin J. Siegert Bristol Glaciology Center, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK BS8 1SS Ignazio Tabacco DST-Geofica, Via Cicoconara 7, 20129 Milano, Italy 1This paper was accepted for publication in February 2004. We wish to thank two anonymous review- ers whose comments improved the manuscript, and Slawek Tulaczyk who provided facilities and logistics for our meeting in Santa Cruz. We dedicate this manuscript to the late Mario Zucchelli, whose energy and ebullience as the host of our first meeting in Bologna, Italy set the tone for all further deliberations. 48 Polar Geography, 2003, 27, No. 1, pp. 48-62. Copyright © 2003 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved. POLAR GEOGRAPHY 49 Abstract: Discovery of at least 100 subglacial lakes beneath the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet has focused international attention on the challenges presented by the way we conduct science in such unique and inhospitable settings in an atmosphere of increas- ingly stringent environmental concerns. Exploration of subglacial environments will require careful and detailed planning, organization, and international cooperation. To this end, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) convened an international Group of Specialists (Subglacial Antarctic Lake Exploration Group of Specialists— SALEGOS) to develop a detailed assessment of the needs and critical milestones to be accomplished during the implementation of a subglacial exploration and research pro- gram. This paper surveys the progress and recommendations made by SALEGOS since its inception regarding the current state of knowledge of subglacial environments, tech- nological needs and challenges, international management, the portfolio of scientific projects, and “clean” requirements for entry, observatory deployment, and sample retrieval. INTRODUCTION Liquid water lakes were identified beneath the ice sheets of Antarctica in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Robin et al., 1970; Oswald and Robin, 1973). The largest and most well known of these lakes is the 250 km long Lake Vostok. The majority of Ant- arctic subglacial lakes are much smaller, having lengths of around 10 km. All subgla- cial lakes are located beneath ice in excess of 3.5 km thick, and are likely to have water depths of the order of tens to hundreds of meters. The age of subglacial lakes is dependent on two factors—the age of the ice sheet and the age of the basal ice. The age of the ice sheet determines when the lake was first established. For Lake Vostok this may be as much as 15 million years ago. The age of basal ice, which melts into subglacial lakes, dictates the age of the lake water. For Lake Vostok this is of the order of 1 million years. Subglacial lakes are therefore significant bodies of water, isolated from the atmosphere for, possibly, millions of years. It has been hypothesized that Antarctic subglacial lakes contain microbial life, and because the habitat is extreme and ancient, these microbes may be unique. To date, no direct measurements have been made in any subglacial lake. Such work is, however, the only way to identify and understand life in these extreme environments. Subglacial lake exploration has caught the imagination of the scientific commu- nity and general public around the world. Interest in the lakes has been growing over the last decade and scientific information about subglacial environments has increased enormously in the last few years. A number of workshops (e.g., SCAR 2001) have considered the scientific value and assessed the scientific advances to be gained from an exploration of subglacial lakes. There was consensus that an explora- tion program and its scientific objectives were worthy of the financial and logistical support that will be needed to accomplish the goals of a subglacial exploration pro- gram. Consideration of the details of an exploration program is an important next step in the realization of such a major program. To further these discussions and provide explicit plans for the development of subglacial programs, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) formed a Subglacial Antarctic Lake Exploration Group of Specialists (SALEGOS) to consider various aspects of subglacial explora- tion and research. The Group was formed at SCAR XXVI in Tokyo in July 2000 and includes 10 members representing five countries. The membership of SALEGOS (comprising the 10 authors of this paper) was organized by the executive committee 50 PRISCU ET AL. of SCAR. The expertise of SALEGOS membership covers a wide range of scientific disciplines and includes extensive experience in managing complex Antarctic projects. Funds were made available from SCAR to organize a series of meetings in which matters relating to the organization of subglacial lake exploration were dis- cussed. Reports from each meeting were made available to scientists outside of the group of specialists, and the public, via the SALEGOS website [http://salegos-scar. montana.edu/]. This report provides an update on the activities of the Group. HISTORY OF SUBGLACIAL LAKE EXPLORATION The early history of the discovery of Antarctic subglacial lakes set the stage for the formation of SALEGOS. The history of subglacial lake exploration occurred in three stages: discovery and serendipity (1960–1979), deliberation and assessment (1994–2001), and action (2001 to present—see Table 1). The discovery and serendip- ity phase began in the mid-1950s with recognition of the possible presence of liquid water accumulation several kilometers below the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet by var- ious investigators (e.g., Robin et al., 1970). While recognized as a novelty, interest in the lakes was minimal for many years to follow. Attention was again brought to the lakes in the early 1990s when more compelling information regarding the existence of a very large lake, Lake Vostok, was provided. This evidence was based on a re- examination of previous airborne radar survey data and seismic experiments as well as the acquisition of new ice surface altimetry from space. It was soon recognized that Lake Vostok was only one of many lakes under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (Siegert et al., 1996; Fig. 1). The period of deliberation and assessment included several work- shops to summarize what was known about subglacial lakes and to determine whether there was sufficient scientific justification to commit the needed resources for their exploration. This phase ended with growing public and scientific interest in subgla- cial lakes and a consensus that the scientific knowledge to be gained by subglacial lake exploration warranted a concerted international effort. The 1999 SCAR Inter- national Workshop on Subglacial Lake Exploration held in Cambridge, England (SCAR 2001) developed a draft science plan for subglacial lake exploration, includ- ing consideration of the technology challenges. The workshop report established sci- entific goals for an exploration program, assessed the exploration technologies needed to attain the goals, suggested the stages required for a phased-in exploration program, established guiding principles for subglacial lake exploration, and produced a set of recommendations to facilitate further planning. The principal scientific goals and requirements set forth by the Cambridge Workshop Report (Table 2) formed the basis for further deliberations by SALEGOS. The current stage of subglacial environment exploration and research is consid- ered to be the “planning and action” phase, where concrete and explicit plans are being developed to implement actual exploration of subglacial environments. This stage is being spearheaded by SALEGOS, whose task is to address such specific issues as lake selection criteria, potential technologies for clean lake entry and sample retrieval, international management models, and a time-line for implementation. In its deliberations SALEGOS decided that the development of specific and explicit sci- ence portfolios would be a useful model to move planning efforts forward. The port- folio approach is intended to encourage wide participation in the program by allowing POLAR GEOGRAPHY 51 TABLE 1 Brief Chronology of Antarctic subglacial Lake Research Stage 1: Exploration and Serendipity • 1961. Russian pilots observation of unusually flat areas on the ice surface. • 1964. Kapitsa and Sorochin undertake a seismic experiment at Vostok Station. These data are later used to confirm the water depth of Lake Vostok (Kapitsa et al., 1996). • 1963–1964. SAE seismic data collected that provides first evidence of liquid water lakes under the ice sheet. • 1973–1975. Radio-echo sounding confirms a lake under Vostok Station. • 1994. International
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