Displaying items by tag: Antarctic

Sharon and Andrew travelled down on a Chilean Air force Hercules plane and arrived at the Chilean base on King George Island on Saturday night.  It was great to see Melinda, Angelica, Gustavo, Todd, Sarah and the rest of the team.  There are 12 people working on Antarctic plants and lichens here at the moment. On Saturday night there was a reception party to welcome us all to the  base and we met up with the other expeditioners over a few glasses of good Chilean wine.

Yesterday we had pre-departure training at INACH ready for our flight to King George Island (Isla Rei Jorge), Antarctica.  We had a medical briefing and then a practical session where I got tied up (see photographs).  

I am at the Annual meeting of the Chilean Biological Society in Puerto Varas in the very beautiful Lake District region of Chile.  Yesterday I participated in a symposium on Antarctic flora organized by Dr Angelica Casonova-Katny, Universidad de Concepcion, and Professor Gustavo Zuniga, Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

My latest paper on the climate effects of the Ozone hole has just been published in the science journal Global Change Biology.

The first scientific destination on this study leave trip in the spring or autumn of 2014 (depending on which hemisphere you might be in) was for a gathereing of polar peatbog scientists, which might be considered rather a niche in the scheme of things, and yet this small concentration of people proved a very good size for an intense and intimate discussion and planning session on the science of arctic and antarctic peat bogs.  

This years SCAR conference proved to be a resounding success (even with a horrid cold trying to infect us all!). The following talks were all completed without a hitch and with many interesting questions from the attending audiences.

As the SCAR conference continues to inspire and initiate international discussions and collaborations in Antarctic Research, the social programme kicked into gear with the Open Science dinner.

At the SCAR Open Science meeting.

Tim Naish and Carlota Escutia both gave great talks on paleoclimate climate looking at what the past can tell us about the future. 

The Robinson Research Group are in Auckland, New Zealand for the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) Open Science Conference (OSC) 2014.

Sharon has brought along 3 of her PhD students: me (Diana), Mel and Rhys. Mel and I are in our final year of our PhD's and Rhys has only just begun. We are all presenting talks on our work (Rhys is talking about his honours work, he hasn't really got a PhD topic sorted out yet!).