A Chip off the King Baudouin Ice Shelf (16278813147) (cropped)

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
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
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
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