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Heimdall Glacier
The Wright Valley, named for Sir Charles Wright, is the central one of the three large Dry Valleys in the Transantarctic Mountains, located west of McMurdo Sound at approximately . Wright Valley contains the Onyx River, the longest river in Antarctica, Lake Brownworth, the origin of the Onyx River, and Lake Vanda, which is fed by the Onyx River. Its southwestern branch, ''South Fork'', is the location of Don Juan Pond. The upland area known as the Labyrinth is at the valley's west end. Although portions of the interconnected valley system were discovered in 1903 by the ''Discovery'' expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the Wright Valley located near the centre of the system was not seen until aerial photographs of the region were made in 1947. By the mid 1960s scientists were becoming increasingly intrigued by the paradoxical fact that the valley lay immediately adjacent to the permanent East Antarctic Ice Sheet, yet had remained ice-free for at least thousands of y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Vanda
Lake Vanda is a lake in Wright Valley, Victoria Land, Ross Dependency, Antarctica. The lake is long and has a maximum depth of . On its shore, New Zealand maintained Vanda Station from 1968 to 1995. Lake Vanda is a hypersaline lake with a salinity more than ten times that of seawater and more than the salinity of the Dead Sea. Lake Vanda is also meromictic, which means that the deeper waters of the lake don't mix with the shallower waters. There are three distinct layers of water ranging in temperature from on the bottom to the middle layer of and the upper layer ranges from . It is only one of the many saline lakes in the ice-free valleys of the Transantarctic Mountains. The longest river of Antarctica, Onyx River, flows west, inland, into Lake Vanda. There is a meteorological station at the mouth of the river. The lake is covered by a transparent ice sheet year-round, though melting in late December forms a moat out to approximately from the shore. The surface of the ice i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Antarctic Ice Sheet
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is one of two large ice sheets in Antarctica, and the largest on the entire planet. The EAIS lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. The EAIS holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by and is considerably larger in area and mass than the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). It is separated from the WAIS by the Transantarctic Mountains. The EAIS is the driest, windiest, and coldest place on Earth, with temperatures reported down to nearly -100°C. The EAIS holds the thickest ice on Earth, at . It is home to the geographic South Pole and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. Temperature changes Cooling in East Antarctica during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s partially offset the impact of climate change on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which has warmed by more than 0.1 °C/decade in the last 50 years. The continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive and statistically significant at >0.0 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victoria Valley
Victoria Valley is one of the larger McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. Lake Vida is the largest lake of the valley. The Victoria River drains the Victoria Upper Glacier, with Upper Victoria Lake just below it and northwest of Lake Vida, into Vida Lake on its western side. Lake Thomas Lake Thomas is a meltwater lake that is circumscribed on the northwest and northeast sides by Robertson Ridge and Clark Glacier (Antarctica), Clark Glacier, in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for ... is east of Lake Vida. See also * Dry Valleys Geology Valleys of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taylor Valley
Taylor Valley is the southernmost of the three large McMurdo Dry Valleys in the Transantarctic Mountains, Victoria Land, Antarctica, located west of McMurdo Sound at approximately . The valley extends from Taylor Glacier in the west to McMurdo Sound at Explorers Cove at the northwest head of New Harbour in the east and is about long. It was once occupied by the receding Taylor Glacier, from which it derives its name. Taylor Valley contains Lake Bonney in the west (inward), and Lake Fryxell in the east (coastward), and Lake Hoare, Lake Chad, Lake Popplewell, Mummy Pond and Parera Pond close together between the two. Further east of Lake Bonney is Pearse Valley. Taylor Valley is separated from Wright Valley in the north by Asgard Range, and from Ferrar Glacier in the south by Kukri Hills. At its southernmost end, Taylor Valley becomes Quinn Gully, a mainly ice-free gully, which descends between MacDonald Hills and Hjorth Hill to Explorers Cove in New Harbour. It was named by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarcophagus Pond
Sarcophagus Pond () is a small ice-covered pond 0.15 nautical miles (0.3 km) east-northeast of Dauphin Pond in the Labyrinth of Wright Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Its descriptive name was suggested by the United States Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the A ... (USAP) field party that sampled the pond in the 2003–04 season: a rock in the middle of the pond is shaped like a stone coffin. Lakes of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McMurdo Dry Valleys
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby glaciers. The rocks here are granites and gneisses, and glacial tills dot this bedrock landscape, with loose gravel covering the ground. It is one of the driest places on Earth and has not seen rain for nearly two million years. The region is one of the world's most extreme deserts, and includes many features including Lake Vida, a saline lake, and the Onyx River, a meltwater stream and Antarctica's longest river. Although no living organisms have been found in the permafrost here, endolithic photosynthetic bacteria have been found living in the relatively moist interior of rocks, and anaerobic bacteria, with a metabolism based on iron and sulfur, live under the Taylor Glacier. The valleys are located within the McMurdo Valleys Antarc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Bull
Lake Bull () is a small lake east of Lake Vanda in Wright Valley, Victoria Land. The name appears to have been applied in the 1960s, probably in association with nearby Bull Pass, or for physicist Colin Bull Bull Pass () is a low pass through the Olympus Range, between Mount Jason and Mount Orestes, joining McKelvey Valley and Wright Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land, Antarctica. It was named by the Victoria University of Wellingto ..., for whom the pass is named. References Lakes of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Headwall Pond
Headwall Pond () is a very small ice-covered pond in the Labyrinth of Wright Valley, in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. The pond lies along a rock headwall close northeast of Craig Pond. The descriptive name was suggested by the United States Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the A ... field party that sampled the pond in 2003–04. References Lakes of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Connell Pond
Connell Pond () is a freshwater frozen pond in the Labyrinth of Wright Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys. The pond lies in Healy Trough, south of Rodriquez Pond. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (2004) after Laurie Connell of the University of Maine, the leader of a United States Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the A ... field party that sampled the pond in 2003–04. References Lakes of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nichols Ridge
Nichols Ridge () is a rock ridge between Denton Glacier and Decker Glacier in east Asgard Range, Victoria Land. The feature descends from heights north of Mount Newall to the snout of Wright Lower Glacier at the east end of Wright Valley. Named by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) (1997) after Robert L. Nichols (Nichols Snowfield), one of the first American scientists to do geologic research in Wright Valley. In 1958, he found pecten deposits near the middle of the valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ... that greatly heightened research to determine the origin of the deposits and the glacial history of Wright Valley. This ridge is in proximity to Meserve, Hart, Goodspeed, and Denton Glaciers, named after four young geologists who worked in this area und ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denton Glacier
Denton Glacier () is a small hanging glacier which drains the northwest slopes of Mount Newall and terminates on the south wall of Wright Valley, Victoria Land. It was named by U.S. geologist Robert Nichols for George H. Denton, geological assistant to Nichols at nearby Marble Point Marble Point is a rocky promontory on the coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica. The United States operates a station at the point. The outpost is used as a helicopter refueling station supporting scientific research in the nearby continental inter ... in the 1958–59 field season. References Glaciers of McMurdo Dry Valleys {{McMurdoDryValleys-glacier-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Cirque
Martin Cirque () is a prominent cirque, northwest of Mount Newall, in the Asgard Range, Antarctica. It occupies the south wall of Wright Valley between Denton Glacier and Nichols Ridge. The cirque is wide and its floor, at an elevation of , is nearly ice free. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (1997) after Craig J. Martin, who had 10 years involvement in Antarctic construction and engineering projects at Siple Station, South Pole Station, and McMurdo Station and various field camps in the McMurdo Dry Valleys from 1977. From 1989 he was Director, Engineering, of Antarctic Support Associates The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and other ..., with responsibility for the management of engineering, construction, and facilities maintenance efforts that directly su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
