Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions

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Resolution 6 (2012) Annex Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions The use of quantitative analyses to combine spatially explicit Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity data with other relevant spatial frameworks (a grid of 200 km x 200 km squares, the nine ice-free domains identified in the Environmental Domains Analysis for the Antarctic continent, and 22 bioregions identified by the SCAR SCAR Regional Sensitivity to Climate Change (RiSCC) Program) has identified 15 biologically distinct ice- free regions encompassing the Antarctic continent and close-lying islands within the Antarctic Treaty area (see Table 1). A full description of the methods employed is presented in Terauds et al. (2012). The Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions illustrated in Figure 1 represent the best classification of Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity based on data currently available from the SCAR Biodiversity Database. The spatial data layer representing the regions is publicly available for download from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre: http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/portal/download_file.cfm?file_id=3420. Reference Terauds, A., Chown, S., Morgan, F., Peat, H., Watts, D., Keys, H., Convey, P. & Bergstrom, D. (2012) Conservation biogeography of the Antarctic. Diversity and Distributions, 22 May 2012, DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2012.00925.x. Table 1 – Descriptions of Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions Region Name Area (km2) 1 North-east Antarctic Peninsula 1142 2 South Orkney Islands 148 3 North-west Antarctic Peninsula 5081 4 Central south Antarctic Peninsula 4959 5 Enderby Land 2152 6 Dronning Maud Land 5502 7 East Antarctica 1360 8 North Victoria Land 9522 9 South Victoria Land 10368 10 Transantarctic Mountains 19347 11 Ellsworth Mountains 2965 12 Marie Byrd Land 1158 13 Adelie Land 178 14 Ellsworth Land 220 15 South Antarctic Peninsula 2990 ATCM XXXV Final Report Figure 1 – Map of Antarctica showing the 15 Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions Source: Terauds et al. (2012) .

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Air and Shipborne Magnetic Surveys of the Antarctic Into the 21St Century

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Office of Polar Programs

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Igneous Rocks of Peter I Island Hemisphere Tectonic Reconstructions

LeMasurier, W. E., and F. A. Wade. In press. Volcanic history in Marie Byrd Land: implications with regard to southern Igneous rocks of Peter I Island hemisphere tectonic reconstructions. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Andean and Antarctic Vol- canology Problems, Santiago, Chile (0. Gonzalez-Ferran, edi- tor). Rome, International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of Earths Interior. THOMAS W. BASTIEN Price, R. C., and S. R. Taylor. 1973. The geochemistry of Dune- Ernest E. Lehmann Associates din Volcano, East Otago, New Zealand: rare earth elements. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403 Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, 40: 195-205. Sun, S. S., and G. N. Hanson. 1975. Origin of Ross Island basanitoids and limitations upon the heterogeneity of mantle CAMPBELL CRADDOCK sources of alkali basalts and nephelinites. Contributions to Department of Geology and Geophysics Mineralogy and Petrology, 52: 77-106. The University of Wisconsin, Madison Sun, S. S., and G. N. Hanson. 1976. Rare earth element evi- Madison, Wisconsin 53706 dence for differentiation of McMurdo volcanics, Ross Island, Antarctica. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, 54: 139-155. Peter I Island lies in the southeastern Pacific Ocean at 68°50S. 90°40W. about 240 nautical miles off the Eights Coast of West Antarctica. Ris- ing from the continental rise, it is one of the few truly oceanic islands in the region. Few people have been on the island, and little is known of its geology. Thaddeus von Bellingshausen discovered and named the island in 1821, and it was not seen again until sighted by Pierre Charcot in 1910. A Nor- wegian ship dredged some rocks off the west coast in 1927, and persons from the Norvegia achieved the first landing in 1929.
Antarctic Primer

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Poleward Propagating Weather Systems in Antarctica

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Thurston Island

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Argentine and Chilean Claims to British Antarctica. - Bases Established in the South Shetlands

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Land, West Antarctica, Using Landsat Illlagery

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Geologic Survey of Marie Byrd Land and Western Ellsworth Land Biswas, N

• Bellingauzen (USSR) Showa (lap.) Capitán Arturo Prat (Ch.) I SER Y—..._.iolodezhnaYa (USSR) 4 C RONDANEC DECEPTION ISLAND Q U c MOUNTAINS ARGENTINE ISLANDS N I . IVEDDELL SEA Halley Bay (UK) 2. (USA) General \) Palmer 0 Mawson (Ausl.)5 Plateau (USA; closed) •\ ., RONNE fl ICE SHELF / Amun en-Scott South Ic (USA) C z Siple (USA) 90E Mirnyy )USSR(C Vostok (USSR) N lCasey (Aunt.) ROSS ICE SHELF colt Base Ni.) tcMurdo (USA) Paths across Antarctica, over DRY VALLEYS which the two-station surface .r.1 ROSS ISLAND ROSS SEA wave method is to be ap- VICTORIA LAND plied. Hallett (USA and N.E.) 500 0 500 1000 L , ..4Dumont dUrville (Fr.) I I_i Leningradskaya (USSR) KILOMETERS 11(0 References Geologic survey of Marie Byrd Land and western Ellsworth Land Biswas, N. N. 1971. The upper mantle structure of the United States from the dispersion of surface waves. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. F. ALTON WADE Biswas, N. N., and L. Knopoff. In press. The structure of the upper mantle under the United States from the dispersion The Museum of Rayleigh waves. Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astro- Texas Tech University nomical Society. Block, S., A. L. Hales, and M. Landisman. 1969. Velocities Progress continues on the reduction of data and analy- in the crust and upper mantle of Southern Africa from multi- mode surface wave dispersion. Seismological Society of Amer. ses of specimens collected during the 1934, 1940, 1966, lea. Bulletin, 59: 1599-1629. 1967, and 1968 field seasons in Marie Byrd Land and Bolt, B.
Subglacial Lake Ellsworth CEE V2.Indd

Proposed Exploration of Subglacial Lake Ellsworth Antarctica Draft Comprehensive Environmental Evaluation February 2011 1 The cover art was created by first, second, and third grade students at The Village School, a Montessori school located in Waldwick, New Jersey. Art instructor, Bob Fontaine asked his students to create an interpretation of the work being done on The Lake Ellsworth Project and to create over 200 of their own imaginary microbes. This art project was part of The Village School’s art curriculum that links art with ongoing cultural work. 2 Contents Non Technical Summary .................................................4 Personnel ............................................................................................ 26 Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................6 Power generation and fuel calculations ....................................... 27 Chapter 2: Description of proposed activity..................7 Vehicles ................................................................................................ 28 Background and justification ..............................................................7 Water and waste ...............................................................................28 The site ...................................................................................................8 Communications ............................................................................... 28 Chapter 3: Baseline conditions of Lake Ellsworth .........9 Transport of equipment
Late Quaternary Volcanic Activity in Marie Byrd Land: Potential 40Ar/39Ar-Dated Time Horizons in West Antarctic Ice and Marine Cores

Late Quaternary volcanic activity in Marie Byrd Land: Potential 40Ar/39Ar-dated time horizons in West Antarctic ice and marine cores T. I. Wilch* Department of Geological Sciences, Albion College, Albion, Michigan 49224 W. C. McIntosh Department of Earth and Environmental Science, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, New Mexico 87801 N. W. Dunbar New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, New Mexico 87801 ABSTRACT More than 12 40Ar/39Ar-dated tephra lay- ies is to determine the basal age of the ice sheet. ers, exposed in bare ice on the summit ice cap The 1968 Byrd Station ice core in the West Late Quaternary volcanic activity at three of Mount Moulton, 30 km from their inferred Antarctic Ice Sheet has an inferred basal age of major alkaline composite volcanoes in Marie source at Mount Berlin, range in age from 492 only 74 ka (Hammer et al., 1994). The exten- Byrd Land, West Antarctica, is dominated by to 15 ka. These englacial tephra layers provide sive lateral flow of ice from the ice divide area explosive eruptions, many capable of deposit- a minimum age of 492 ka for the oldest iso- to Byrd Station may have removed or disturbed ing ash layers as regional time-stratigraphic topically dated ice in West Antarctica. This much of the basal ice record. Consequently, the horizons in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and well-dated section of locally derived glacial ice 74 ka date of the Byrd core provides only a in Southern Ocean marine sediments.
Geologic Studies in the English Coast, Eastern Ellsworth Land, Antarctica

tains only small amounts of phillipsite, smectite, and calcite. from progressive dissolution of basaltic glass. Hydrothermal The distinct upper contact of this unit cuts across bedding. The alteration associated with dike emplacement has also produced tuffs above have been extensively altered to palagonite, palagonitization at some localities. It is probable that the altera- zeolites, smectite, and calcite. This relationship suggests that tion history of many of these deposits is complicated by the during alteration of the upper part of Castle Rock, the lower part operation of both mechanisms. was protected by ice, and authigenic mineral formation was The presence of early formed phillipsite and the persistence restricted by frozen interstitial water. With lowering of the ice of relatively fresh glass in many of the antarctic hyaloclastite level, the unaltered base was exposed to percolating meteoric samples unrelated to age, suggest that following initial pal- water. The glass, unprotected by more stable secondary miner- agonitization and authigenic mineral formation, diagenesis pro- als and palagonite, has undergone extensive dissolution. Fluc- ceeds slowly due to reduction in porosity and available exposed tuations in ice level, therefore, may affect the intensity or style glass (Fumes 1974) and to the relative lack of free water in the of postdepositional alteration. antarctic environment. Thanks to the other geologists in the field: Anne Wright, Philip Kyle, and Harry Keys (1982— 1983), David Johnson (1983 _ie "" t4!f^ - 1984), and Nelia Dunbar (1984 - 1985). This research was supported by National Science Foundation grant DPP 80-20836 to W.E. LeMasurier. References Fumes, H. 1974. Volume relations between palagonite and authigenic minerals in hyaloclastites, and its beating on the rate of palagonitiza- tion.