The King Baudouin Ice Shelf (also called Roi Baudouin Ice shelf, from
French: Plateforme de glace Roi Baudouin) in
Dronning Maud Land
Queen Maud Land ( no, Dronning Maud Land) is a roughly region of Antarctica claimed by Norway as a dependent territory. It borders the claimed British Antarctic Territory 20° west and the Australian Antarctic Territory 45° east. In a ...
,
East Antarctica, is within the
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
part of
Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...
. It is named after King
Baudouin of Belgium (1930-1993).
Geology
The King Baudouin ice shelf is confined by two
ice rise
An ice rise is a clearly defined elevation of the otherwise very much flatter ice shelf, typically dome-shaped and rising several hundreds of metres above the surrounding ice shelf
. An ice rise forms where the ice shelf touches the seabed due t ...
s (including
Derwael Ice Rise Derwael Ice Rise is 40 km long, 35 km wide and about 400 m tall ice rise in ice shelf off Princess Ragnhild Coast, Antarctica
Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of ...
) and one under-ice pinning-point with a width of only a few kilometres; the latter seems to define the seaward edge of the
ice shelf
An ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are only found in Antarctica, Greenland, Northern Canada, and the Russian Arctic. The ...
and impacts ice flow in the hinterland.
[Be:Wise -The Buttressing Effect: Why ice shelves are essential](_blank)
antarcticstation.org, 12 November 2012, accessed 14 January 2015
Roi Baudoin Base
Belgium was one of the original 12 signatories of the
Antarctic Treaty
russian: link=no, Договор об Антарктике es, link=no, Tratado Antártico
, name = Antarctic Treaty System
, image = Flag of the Antarctic Treaty.svgborder
, image_width = 180px
, caption ...
. It established its
Roi Baudoin Base scientific research station on the ice shelf in 1958, built for the
International Geophysical Year (IGY), and decommissioned in 1967. This operated over several three year cycles: 1958–1961 and 1964–1966.
Study
The ice shelf is being actively studied by
Belgian Antarctic Program Belgium was one of the 12 countries that initially negotiated and signed the Antarctic Treaty (Washington, 1959). scientists from the
Princess Elisabeth Base
Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, located on Utsteinen Nunatak in Queen Maud Land (), is a Belgian scientific polar research station, which went into service on 15 February 2009.
History
The station, designed, built and operated by the Internati ...
. This includes:
* BELARE (Belgian Antarctic Research Project), with a
GPS
The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...
position reference
tweeting
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
position and rate of movement, and ice depth measurements;
* Be:Wise, examining the ice dynamics where the shelf is grounded, and which buttress the ice flow from the
East Antarctic ice sheet
In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at La ...
.
Supposed meteor crater
In early 2015, scientists announced the discovery of an almost circular structure in the ice surface, about wide. First hypothesis for its origin, among other ice-shelf processes, was the impact of a
meteor
A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mi ...
. The feature was discovered by German scientist Christian Müller as he conducted an aerial survey on 20 December 2014.
[Mysterious ring in Antarctica may have been caused by a meteorite](_blank)
Cheryl Santa Maria, Weather Network
The Weather Network (TWN) is a Canadian English-language weather information specialty channel available in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. It delivers weather information on television, digital platforms (responsive websites, ...
, 12 January 2015, accessed 14 January 2015 If found, this is likely to be the largest identified
Antarctic meteorite, as the rule of thumb is that the meteorite causing a crater is about 5-10%
[Two km wide crater in Antarctica linked to 2004 meteorite impact](_blank)
Jayalakshmi K, International Business Times, 11 January 2015, accessed 14 January 2015 of the diameter of the crater, or roughly 200m in this case. Initial analysis of satellite images indicates that the feature could have been present before the supposed impact,
even for 25 years.
In December 2016, researchers concluded that the structure is a collapsed underground lake.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baudouin Ice Shelf
Ice shelves of Queen Maud Land