Lake Bonney (
) is a
saline lake
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...
with permanent ice cover at the western end of
Taylor Valley in the
McMurdo Dry Valleys of
Victoria Land
Victoria Land is a region in eastern Antarctica which fronts the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, extending southward from about 70°30'S to 78°00'S, and westward from the Ross Sea to the edge of the Antarctic Plateau. I ...
,
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 long and up to wide. A narrow channel only wide (''Lake Bonney at Narrows'') separates the lake into ''East Lake Bonney'' () and ''West Lake Bonney'' ().
To the north and south of the lake lie peaks that are over above sea level, and the
Taylor Glacier
__NOTOC__
The Taylor Glacier is an Antarctic glacier about long, flowing from the plateau of Victoria Land into the western end of Taylor Valley, north of the Kukri Hills, south of the Asgard Range. The middle part of the glacier is bounded ...
is positioned to the west of the lake. It is deep and is perpetually trapped under of ice.
It was first visited by the
British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904. It was named by the
Robert Falcon Scott
Captain Robert Falcon Scott, , (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the ''Discovery'' expedition of 1901–1904 and the ill-fated ''Terra Nov ...
expedition of 1910-1913, for
Thomas George Bonney, professor of geology at
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
, England from 1877 to 1901.
Lake Bonney is one of the main lakes studied by the National Science Foundations, McMurdo
Long Term Ecological Research site.
Starting in 2007
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
is funding an autonomous submersible robot called
ENDURANCE
Endurance (also related to sufferance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from an ...
to explore the water volume of the lake to study its shape and ecology. The robot is built by
Stone Aerospace
Stone Aerospace is an aerospace engineering firm founded by engineer and explorer Bill Stone, located in Del Valle, a suburb of Austin, Texas.[DEPTHX
The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) is an autonomous underwater vehicle designed and built by Stone Aerospace, an aerospace engineering firm based in Austin, Texas. It was designed to autonomously explore and map underwater sinkholes in ...]
submersible. The Endurance Project is led by
Peter Doran
Peter T. Doran, Ph.D. is Professor of Geology and Geophysics and John Franks Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University. Prior to 2015, he was faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Doran specialize ...
with
Bill Stone and
John Priscu among the co-investigators. Scientists have discovered an ancient
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syst ...
beneath the Taylor Glacier, next to Lake Bonney. This ecosystem survives by transforming sulfur and iron compounds for growth.
The work is seen as a stage in developing an autonomous submersible robot that could explore the ocean on
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...
's moon
Europa
Europa may refer to:
Places
* Europe
* Europa (Roman province), a province within the Diocese of Thrace
* Europa (Seville Metro), Seville, Spain; a station on the Seville Metro
* Europa City, Paris, France; a planned development
* Europa Clif ...
.
Tributaries
Lake Bonney is fed by a number of
meltwater
Meltwater is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found in the ablation zone of glaciers, where the rate of snow cover is reducing. Meltwater ca ...
streams:
* Bartlette Creek
*
Bohner Stream
*
Doran Stream (feeding Priscu Stream)
* Lawson Creek
*
Lizotte Creek
*
Lyons Creek
* Mason Creek
*
Priscu Stream (the longest, )
* Red River
* Santa Fe Stream
* Sharp Creek
*
Vincent Creek
See also
*
Blood Falls
Blood Falls is an outflow of an iron oxide–tainted plume of saltwater, flowing from the tongue of Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarctic ...
, an outflow of the tip of the Taylor Glacier containing an iron oxide tainted plume of melting salty water flowing onto the ice-covered surface of Lake Bonney
*
Lake Washburn (Antarctica) Lake Washburn is a lake that formerly existed in the Taylor Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. It formed when climatic changes and an expansion of ice caused the flooding of the valley, between 23,000 and 8,340 radiocarbon years ago. Its exte ...
, a precursor lake
Further reading
* Johanna Laybourn-Parry, Jemma L. Wadham
Antarctic Lakes P 120
* Peter T. Doran, W. Berry Lyons, Diane M. McKnight, editor
Life in Antarctic Deserts and other Cold Dry Environments: Astrobiological Analogs P 164
* Obryk, M. K., P. T. Doran, and J. C. Priscu (2014)
The permanent ice cover of Lake Bonney, Antarctica: The influence of thickness and sediment distribution on photosynthetically available radiation and chlorophyll‐a distribution in the underlying water column, J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci., 119, 1879–1891, doi: 10.1002/2014JG002672
* Chao Tang, Michael T. Madigan, and Brian Lanoil
Bacterial and Archaeal Diversity in Sediments of West Lake Bonney, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica Appl Environ Microbiol. 2013 Feb; 79(3): 1034–1038. doi: 10.1128/AEM.02336-12
* H.A. DUGAN, M.K. OBRYK, P.T. DORAN
Lake ice ablation rates from permanently ice-covered Antarctic lakes, Journal of Glaciology, Vol. 59, No. 215, 2013 doi:10.3189/2013JoG12J080, P 491
* Gideon M. Henderson, Brenda L. Hall, Andrew Smith, Laura F. Robinson
Control on (234U/ 238U) in lake water: A study in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica Chemical Geology 226 (2006) 298 – 308
* Tessa Pocock and Marc-André Lachance, Thomas Pröschold, John C. Priscu, Sam Sulgi Kim, Norman P. A. Huner
IDENTIFICATION OF A PSYCHROPHILIC GREEN ALGA FROM LAKE BONNEY ANTARCTICA: CHLAMYDOMONAS RAUDENSIS ETTL. (UWO 241) CHLOROPHYCEAE J. Phycol. 40, 1138–1148 (2004), doi: 10.1111/j.1529-8817.2004.04060.x
* Ernest E. Angino Kenneth B. Armitage Jerry C. Tash
PHYSICOCHEMICAL LIMNOLOGY OF LAKE BONNEY, ANTARCTICA, doi: 10.4319/lo.1964.9.2.0207
References
* U.S. Geological Survey, Geographic Names Information System. Accessed January 2008
*
April 22, 2007. Accessed January 2008
External links
Lake dataSatellite mapLake Bonney panoramic picture
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonney
Lakes of Victoria Land
McMurdo Dry Valleys
Saline lakes of Antarctica
Endorheic lakes of Antarctica