Physical Controls on the Taylor Valley Ecosystem, Antarctica

Fountain, Andrew G.; Lyons, W. Berry; Burkins, Melody B.; Dana, Gayle L.; Doran, Peter T.; Lewis, Karen J.; McKnight, Diane M.; Moorhead, Daryl L.; Parsons, Andrew N.; Priscu, John C.; Wall, Diana H.; Wharton, Robert A.; Virginia, Ross A.

doi:10.1525/bisi.1999.49.12.961

Cited by 170 publications

(181 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In addition, Chinn (1993) noted that lake-levels farther north in the Convoy Range and in the Terra Nova Bay region appeared to be falling during intervals of warm temperature, because of increased snowfall. Work on modern glaciers confirms these observations that snow cover greatly reduces melting (Fountain et al, 1999).…”

Section: Climatementioning

confidence: 52%

“…In addition, melting would be much more difficult with the high albedo resulting from significant snow cover. Work on the present hydrological balance of the dry valleys indicates that snow is detrimental to meltwater production (Fountain et al, 1998(Fountain et al, , 1999.…”

Section: Source Of the Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As sublimation is fairly constant, recent changes in lakelevel have resulted from variations in meltwater flow. The exact mechanism for meltwater fluctuations is unclear, but it has been noted by several researchers that snowy conditions greatly reduce meltwater production (Chinn, 1993;Fountain et al, 1999;Hendy, 2000;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Glacial Lake Victoria, a high‐level Antarctic Lake inferred from lacustrine deposits in Victoria Valley

Hall

Denton

Overturf

et al. 2002

J Quaternary Science

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We present evidence of a large lake (Glacial Lake Victoria) that existed in Victoria Valley in the dry valleys region of Antarctica between at least 20 000 and 8600 14 C yr BP. At its highstands, Glacial Lake Victoria covered 100 km 2 and was ca. 200 m deep. The chronology for lake-level changes comes from 87 AMS radiocarbon dates of lacustrine algae preserved in deltas and glaciolacustrine deposits that extend up to 185 m above present-day lakes on the valley floor. The existence of Glacial Lake Victoria, as well as other large lakes in the dry valleys, indicates a climate regime significantly different from that of today at the last glacial maximum and in the early Holocene.

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Section: Climatementioning

confidence: 52%

Section: Source Of the Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Glacial Lake Victoria, a high‐level Antarctic Lake inferred from lacustrine deposits in Victoria Valley

Hall

Denton

Overturf

et al. 2002

J Quaternary Science

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“…Taylor Valley trends northeast to southwest, has been glacially covered by movements of both the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, and is thought to have been a fjord in the Late Tertiary. The landscape is currently a composite of soils, ephemeral streams, closed-basin, ice-covered lakes, and glaciers (Fountain et al 1999). Each of these landscape units is associated with characteristic fauna and flora, and their carbon and nutrient dynamics and ecosystems structure and function have been well documented in the past >20 years, especially by the research of the MCM-LTER program (Priscu et al 1999;Barrett et al 2006;Barrett et al 2007).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of fossil fuel burning related to scientific activities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica: Revisited

Lyons

Saelens

Welch

2018

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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Fossil fuel use associated with scientific activities in the Taylor Valley, Antarctic has been examined to determine the fluxes of particulate organic and elemental carbon and nitrogen as well as NOx for the 2015–2016 austral summer field season. These carbon and nitrogen fluxes are compared to our previously published calculations for the 1997–1998 austral summer. In addition, we compile fossil fuel usage and resulting C and N fluxes from the major field camp in Taylor Valley, Lake Hoare Camp (LHC) from the late 1990’s through 2017. In general, the annual fluxes do vary from year to year, but there is no significant trend, at least during the primary summer field season. There is indication that increasing the length of scientific operations does increase the C and N inputs via fossil fuel burning. This works supports our original results demonstrating that over long periods of time the anthropogenic flux of N from local fossil fuel burning could become quantitatively important in the region. Although the particulate C fluxes remain very low, the recent finding of black carbon in the Taylor Valley landscape indicates more on-going monitoring of the source of this material is merited.

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“…Most cryosphere landscape monitoring focuses on the collection of long-term climate and surface energy balance measurements [e.g., Fountain et al, 1999;Brown et al, 2000;Harris et al, 2001;Doran et al, 2002a;Smith et al, 2003;Romanovsky et al, 2010;Guglielmin et al, 2012]. These commonly combine mapping, geographic information system analyses, satellite mapping, ground-based imaging, and/or lidar scans [Barnhart and Crosby, 2013], but surface climatology data sets typically sample at a rate far in excess of the imaging or mapping rate.…”

Section: Existing Monitoringmentioning

confidence: 99%