Picture galleries

This section regroups all picture galleries published on SciencePoles alongside some articles or news. It's currently a bit of a work in progress but more will be added with future articles.

Pine Island Glacier

06.01.2010

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica contains about 10% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and drains much of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). It flows north into the Amundsen Sea, part of the Southern Ocean. Glaciologists have only been studying West Antarctica intensively for 25 to 30 years. The Pine Island Glacier has been changing rapidly ever since it first began to be observed regularly in the 1990s.
Going to Antarctica to Look for Meteorites

21.12.2009

A research team from the 51st Japanese Antarctic Resarch Expedition (JARE 51) is heading to the eastern Sør Rondane Mountains in Antarctica to look for meteorites. This gallery shows the Japanese icebreaker Shirase leaving from Australia on its way to Antarctica and various kinds of meteorites.
26th CHINARE Expedition: Departure

09.12.2009

On the 11th of January 2009, the 26th Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE 26) departed onboard the icebreaker Xue Long (Snow Dragon) for a six-month expedition to Antarctica. The expedition is to comprise a mix of logistics, construction, and scientific research within the context of PANDA, China's International Polar Year research programme. The Xue Long is expected back in its home port of Shanghai in April 2010.
Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research Project (LTER)

26.11.2009

For more than 30 years, researchers from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have been going to Alaska during the summer months to look at Arctic tundra and freshwater ecosystems in Alaska's North Slope region as part of the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project. Noticeable changes have occurred in the ecosystem of Toolik Lake over the past 30 years.
Investigating Ice Sheets

05.11.2009

There's still a lot researchers don't know about how ice sheets flow. Having a look at the grounding line - the last point of an ice sheet that rests on continental bedrock before the ice starts to flow over water to form an ice shelf - are of particular interest to glaciologists because what happens here influences how fast the ice flows onto an ice shelf During the BELISSIMA project, Dr. Frank Pattyn from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium and his colleagues investigated ice sheet dynamics with special emphasis on investigating what happens at grounding lines.