Victoria University Antarctic Research Expedition Science and Logistics Reports 2000-01: VUWAE 45

2. Proposed Programme

2. Proposed Programme

Due to re-organisation of PICO (Polar Ice Coring Office, now Ice Core Drilling Service), the original plan of this season 'Holocene Glacial Ice - a Continuous Paleothermometer' has been altered, with the deep drilling (~240m) at Victoria Lower Glacier (VLG) postponed until season 2001/2002. Instead we introduce some of the modules planned for our third field season; 'Ancient Ice Deposits - Windows into the Past'. The remaining project outline has been followed as proposed.

Hence the main emphasis of this year's fieldwork was to conclude the preparation for drilling and interpreting a 10,000 year climate record and to investigate the western snout of VLG for the possibility of providing a Pleistocene climate record.

For this we proposed:
  • to map bedrock topography and internal glacial structures of VLG
  • to sample four snow pits on VLG, Baldwin and Wilson Piedmont Glacier
  • to recover shallow ice and firn cores from VLG and Wilson Piedmont Glacier
  • to measure the current glacial mass balance of VLG
  • to record the weather observations from VLG, Baldwin, and Wilson Piedmont Glacier and to compare them with climate records from Marble Point, Lake Vanda and Lake Vida
  • to measure current dust flux
  • to quantify radiant heat flux in the snow pack and albedo values