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Australian Antarctic Magazine — Issue 19: 2010

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Australian Antarctic Magazine — Issue 19: 2010 AusTRALIAN ANTARCTIC MAGAZINE ISSUE 19 2010 AusTRALIAN ANTARCTIC ISSUE 2010 MAGAZINE 19 The Australian Antarctic Division, a division of the Departmentof Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, leads Australia’s CONTENTS Antarctic program and seeks to advance Australia’s Antarctic interests in pursuit of its vision of having SCIENCE ‘Antarctica valued, protected and understood’. It does Aerial ‘OktoKopter’ to map Antarctic moss 1 this by managing Australian government activity in Whale poo fertilises oceans 4 Antarctica, providing transport and logistic support to Australia’s Antarctic research program, maintaining four Modelling interactions between Antarctica and the Southern Ocean 6 permanent Australian research stations, and conducting ICECAP returns to Casey 7 scientific research programs both on land and in the Southern Ocean. Seabed surveys for sewage solutions 8 Australia’s four Antarctic goals are: Dispersal and biodiversity of Antarctic marine species 10 • To maintain the Antarctic Treaty System and enhance Australia’s influence in it; MARINE MAmmAL RESEARCH • To protect the Antarctic environment; Surveying Pakistan’s whales and dolphins 12 • To understand the role of Antarctica in Fiji focuses on endangered humpback whales 13 the global climate system; and Capacity-building in Papua New Guinea 13 • To undertake scientific work of practical, Dolphin hotspot a conservation priority 14 economic and national significance. Unmanned aircraft count for conservation 15 Australian Antarctic Magazine seeks to inform the Australian and international Antarctic community AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC SCIENCE SEASON 2010-11 about the activities of the Australian Antarctic program. Opinions expressed in Australian Antarctic Magazine Science season overview 16 do not necessarily represent the position of the New 10-year science strategic plan 20 Australian Government. Antarctic operations 21 Australian Antarctic Magazine is produced twice a year (June and December). All text and images published in INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR the magazine are copyright of the Commonwealth of International Polar Year conference 23 Australia, unless otherwise stated. Editorial enquiries, including requests to reproduce material, Polar data in the picture 25 or contributions, should be addressed to: Grand finale to decade-long census 25 The Editor Australian Antarctic Magazine IN THE FIELD Australian Antarctic Division AmisoR: Understanding the ocean beneath the ice 26 203 Channel Highway Kingston, 7050 POLICY Tasmania, Australia Saving seabirds 28 Australian Antarctic Division Antarctic Treaty Parties tackle emerging challenges 29 Telephone: (03) 6232 3209 (International 61 3 6232 3209) ANTARCTIC OUTREACH Email: [email protected] Facsimile: (03) 6232 3288 The sounds of Antarctica 30 (International 61 3 6232 3288) The Antarctic dance 31 Editor: Wendy Pyper Scientists in schools – Antarctica meets Darwin 32 Production: Sally Chambers, Jonothan Davis, Antarctic Visions 33 Jessica Fitzpatrick, Glenn Jacobson, Mat Oakes. Bridging the ‘two cultures’ divide 34 Graphic Design: Clemenger Tasmania ISSN 1445-1735 (print version) IN BRIEF 35 Australian Antarctic Magazine is printed on Monza satin FREEZE FRAME 37 recycled paper; a 50% post-consumer waste and 50% FSC-certified fibre stock. Australian Antarctic Magazine can be viewed online: www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine ABOUT THE COVER Weather observer Nick Roden took this photograph of the aurora australis, intersected by the LIDAR laser beam at Davis station, on a cold July night this year. Australian Government The aurora australis results from the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s Department of Sustainability, Environment, magnetic field. ‘Excited’ oxygen atoms hit by charged particles from the sun emit Water, Population and Communities river-like ribbons of neon-green light as they return to their lowest energy state. Australian Antarctic Division Nick says it took only 30 seconds to take the photograph but planning for it and RY waiting for the right conditions took many months. Another of Nick’s aurora EA photos features in this issue’s Freeze Frame section on page 37. O’l EN B AAD9614rj SCIENCE R UCIEE L O ARK AERIAL ‘OKTOKOPTER’ TO MAP ANTARCTIC MOSS date these mosses and map their extent in Polar regions are experiencing R sufficient spatial detail means that, for the first UCIEE rapid and severe climatic L time, mosses can be used as sentinels to provide O shifts with major changes in crucial information on how the Antarctic coastal ARK temperature, wind speed and climate has changed over past centuries and how Top: This small depression in a Casey moss bed biota has responded to these changes. highlights the effect of micro-topography and water UV-B radiation already observed in availability on moss health. The moss above the In the first year of our project, ‘Spatial analysis of depression is drying out and turning light brown. Antarctica. As climatic records only changing terrestrial ecosystems in the Windmill Above: The first UAV, comprising a remote-controlled extend back 50 years, we urgently Islands and the sub-Antarctic’, and the first helicopter with a camera, at Robinson Ridge in 2010. field season at Casey in 2010, we found that the need new proxies to determine if spatial scale of the moss beds (tens of square coastal climate has changed over metres) makes satellite imagery unsuitable the past century. for mapping their extent in sufficient detail. However, recent developments in the use of In a manner similar to trees, old-growth mosses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for remote- preserve a climate record along their shoots. sensing applications provide exciting new The Windmill Islands region near Casey has the opportunities for ultra-high resolution mapping most extensive and well-developed moss beds and monitoring of the environment. in Eastern Antarctica. Our ability to accurately In 2009, we developed a new UAV consisting ISSUE 19 2010 AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC MAGAZINE 1 SCIENCE 1 WENDY PYPER of an electric remote-controlled helicopter captured in the GPS data. Accurate and detailed moss temperature. This exciting new equipment capable of carrying three different cameras information on the micro-topography is of and the science behind it will provide us with for cost-effective, efficient, and ultra-high crucial importance for moss bed mapping and state-of-the-art datasets that will teach us more resolution (less than 5 cm pixel size) mapping monitoring as it drives water availability and about these special Antarctic sentinels. of terrestrial vegetation in the Windmill Islands. local temperature. To address this issue we ARKO LUCIEER1, SHARON ROBINSON2 We managed to collect spatial data for four adopted an exciting new technique developed and DANA BERGSTROM3 different moss sites: Antarctic Specially Protected in the field of computer vision. With this 1. University of Tasmania, 2. University of Wollongong, Area (ASPA) 135, the Red Shed, Robinson Ridge, technique we can extract very detailed ‘3-D 3. Australian Antarctic Division and ASPA136. During our UAV tests at Casey point clouds’ of the terrain by overlapping UAV in 2010 we also demonstrated that the UAV is photographs, allowing us to capture the micro- ideal for capturing photographs of the station topography in an extremely detailed spatial buildings and environment – providing a quick dataset (image 2). and easy way to collect spatial information for More recently we purchased and developed a management purposes. new UAV called the ‘OktoKopter’. This multi-rotor The location of moss communities is largely helicopter is a much more stable platform than driven by water availability and is restricted to the UAV we developed in 2009. The OktoKopter 1. The more stable eight-rotor OktoKopter, mounted with a six-band multispectral camera, which moist environments that receive water during allows us to take sharper photos with a full-size will be used to map Casey moss beds in the 2011 the summer snow melt. Topographic factors digital SLR camera and a stabilised camera Antarctic summer. such as micro-topography (e.g. boulders and platform. The Oktokopter also has an autopilot 2. A 3-D point cloud with 1 cm point spacing that rocks), water drainage, upstream catchment, that allows autonomous navigation to GPS captures the micro-topography of the moss beds. slope and solar irradiance play a key role in moss waypoints, enabling more efficient coverage This point cloud is derived from overlapping UAV occurrence and health. We collected data on of the moss beds. In 2011 we plan to use the photography. the moss bed topography using accurate GPS OktoKopter to map the Casey moss beds in 3. Two detailed UAV photographs of a 6 m x 4 m area showing a visible photograph (bottom) and receivers to capture some of these important greater detail than before. The OktoKopter will a near-infrared (NIR) photograph (top). The NIR environmental factors. From these GPS transects carry three new sensors: a high-resolution digital photograph shows healthy moss as bright pixels. we managed to create digital elevation models camera (DSLR), a six-band multispectral camera 4. UAV photograph and location of moss quadrats (DEMs), but we found that the subtle variation in (allowing us to detect moss species and their draped over the DEM. the terrain (micro-topography) was insufficiently health), and a thermal camera for mapping the 2 AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC MAGAZINE ISSUE 19 2010 SCIENCE ARKO LUCIEER 2 ARKO LUCIEER 3 WENDY PYPER ARKO LUCIEER 4 ISSUE 19 2010 AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC MAGAZINE 3 SCIENCE Whale poo fertilises oceans Y VE R A H IONA 1 & F AVE D Australian Antarctic scientists Iron enters the ocean either through wind-blown OUBLE D E K dust from the Antarctic continent or through I recently tested their hypothesis M the upwelling of water from the ocean depths. that whale poo can act as a The deep water is richer in nutrients because fertiliser in the ocean. Their results particulate matter, including dead algae and suggest that the recovery of detritus, sinks out of the sunlit layer to the ocean’s interior, where microbial processes break whale populations to pre-whaling it down into its constituent chemicals.
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