Lower Erebus Hut
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Lower Erebus Hut
OR:
Lower Erebus Hut on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

The Lower Erebus Hut (LEH) is a permanent field facility located on Mount Erebus on
Ross Island Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound. Ross Island lies within the boundaries of Ross Dependency, an area of Antarctica claimed by New ...
, Antarctica. The hut served as the seasonal base of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory (MEVO), run by New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMT). The installation comprises two huts, one kitchen and recreation building and one working and storage building.


History

The permanent LEH was built in November 1992 as a replacement for the Upper hut and other semi-permanent Jamesway huts.


Location

LEH is located on the northern side of Mount Erebus within its
caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...
rim. The location facilitates trips to the crater rim where the volcano's persistent
lava lake Lava lakes are large volumes of molten lava, usually basaltic, contained in a volcanic vent, crater, or broad depression. The term is used to describe both lava lakes that are wholly or partly molten and those that are solidified (sometim ...
is visible.


Science

Major support for all operations at LEH are conducted through
McMurdo Station McMurdo Station is a United States Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the Unit ...
run by a division of
NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party *National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...
, the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). LEH is used as a base of operations for the monitoring of Mt Erebus, other scientific studies, and maintenance of such equipment. The work force at LEH, which is composed of senior research scientists, professors and graduate students, maintains both scientific and logistical equipment on the mountain. Past research has included gaseous emission concentration, composition and flux as well as thermal image stills, visible and IR video, seismic, and infrasonic studies of the volcano.


See also

* List of Antarctic research stations * List of Antarctic field camps


References


External links


NMT
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

UNAVCO Polar Services - Antarctic - Geodetic Benchmarks {{Antarctica Ross Island Outposts of Antarctica Outposts of the Ross Dependency Volcano observatories Buildings and structures completed in 1992 1992 establishments in Antarctica