errestrial plants? How are such plants reacting to the 50-year warming trend around the Antarctic Peninsula? Thomas Day of the University of Arizona and his team will study the impact of UV-B and warming on the health of two vascular plant species near Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula. The study may shed light on the possible consequences of global warming for land plants.

Drilling an Ice Dome in West Antarctica Fast-flowing ice streams, analogous to rivers, drain part of West Antarctica's ice sheet out to the floating Ross Ice Shelf, and hence to the sea. How permanent is this ice sheet, which is actually anchored below sea level? As part of a major, multi-year initiative, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet program, scientists led by Kendrick Taylor of the Desert Research Institute will begin drilling a 1000-meter core from Siple Dome, a rise of ice located between two ice streams on the coast of the Ross Sea, and a critical location for taking the ice sheet's pulse.

The core's ice record is expected to span 80,000 years, including part of the last glaciation, and to have distinct annual ice layers back at least 6,000 years. The core will shed light on coastal climate and ice stream dynamics in the past. It will also be compared with the famous deep cores from the Greenland ice sheet, to assess whether the rapid climate changes recorded in Greenland had a global reach.

Flying Above the Rift If West Antarctica's ice melted, sea level would rise worldwide by six meters. West Antarctica's swift ice streams lie above a geologic rift -- an area where the earth's crust is pulling apart, possibly with profound effects on the ice streams' behavior, and hence on the ice sheet's overall stability. An aerogeophysical survey headed by Donald Blankenship of the University of Texas at Austin and Robin Bell of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is tracing how the sub-ice rift architect
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Contact: Lynn Simarski
lsimarsk@nsf.gov
703-306-1070
National Science Foundation
31-Oct-1996


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