Berry Lyons, professor of geological sciences and director of the Byrd Polar Research Center, has spent the last two years heading a multi-university research team studying one of the most fragile environments on earth the rare open-water streams and lakes of Taylor Valley in Antarctica. For a brief six to 12 weeks each summer, the temperature rises enough in Antarctica's arid Dry Valleys to create meltwater streams that feed into several perennial ice-covered lakes that dot the valley floor.

At Lyons’ base camp at Lake Hoare, three Ohio State scientists monitor the geochemistry of these rare aquatic environments trying to uncover how such tenuous ecosystems take hold and thrive. Over the last two decades, they've watched a dramatic rise in the water levels at Hoare and the other lakes. And while there is evidence of some climate change in this region during that period, the scientists are trying to learn if higher temperatures alone are the cause.

The Taylor Valley project is one of 21 Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites supported by the National Science Foundation. The Dry Valleys ecosystems must have blossomed and died again and again in the Dry Valleys over millions of years of as glaciers advanced, melted to form lakes, and the lakes eventually evaporating, leaving only dry soil. "We want to learn what has happened in the past when the environments there were better or less well-suited for life," Lyons says. The Dry Valleys are perhaps the only place on Earth resembling the current environment on Mars.

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Byrd Polar Research Center

LTER

National Science Foundation

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