View from the bottom of the world

Wisconsin science plays a key role in Antarctica
Stories and photos by
ERNIE MASTROIANNI
©Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Originally published January 7, 2001

McMurdo Station, Antarctica -- John Isbell is relaxing in the McMurdo Station dining hall with Paul Lenaker. Isbell, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee geologist, and Lenaker, a UWM graduate student, have just completed a successful six-week stint in the spectacular Transantarctic Mountains.

The partners gathered rocky evidence of glacial movement during the Permian Era, more than 200 million years ago. Now, as one year ends and another begins, they are looking ahead to studying their samples.

But not without first looking back a bit.

"It's a place I'd love to come back to," Lenaker says.

The two spent the last day in the mountains listening. Just listening.

"We were at Alligator Peak, and we had a day to sit, and hear the glacier cracking," Isbell says. "It sounds like a whip cracking, then you hear the echo of the ice falling."

Welcome to life at the bottom of the world.

Isbell's work is just one of a host of Antarctic projects that involve Wisconsin equipment, Wisconsin research and design, Wisconsin scientists or some combination of the three. During the relatively warm months of the year -- which recently began in Antarctica -- Wisconsinites are literally all over the continent.

Antarctica is the last frontier on Earth, the driest and coldest place on the planet. Thousands of scientists from all over the world are drawn each year by the chance to work in what is as close to a pristine environment as the planet provides. To them, Antarctica is one big laboratory. World-class science is the norm; only the best can get the support and funding needed to make the pilgrimage.


Wisconsin's presence and influence is pervasive.


Just a few tables away from Isbell and Lenaker, Tim Paulson, a geologist from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, is explaining over dinner his research on the local volcano group. Mount Erebus, a 12,444-foot monolith that dominates the skyline, is the world's southernmost active volcano.

Paulson is trying to map out the stress points in the Earth's crust in the area by studying what are called parasitic cones, which grow on the side of large volcanoes.

And there are more. Numerous graduate assistants, researchers, engineers and support workers on the frozen continent come from Wisconsin.

-- Civil engineer Jerry Marty, who grew up in Monroe and graduated from UW-Platteville, directs the construction of the new South Pole station, a $150 million marvel of engineering. (He also made sure a Green Bay Packers flag was flying at the South Pole during the team's two most recent Super Bowl appearances.)



-- University of Wisconsin-Madison astrophysicists Robert Morse and Francis Halzen search for information on the evolution of the universe using a neutrino detector buried two kilometers deep in ice, directly under the geographic South Pole. It's the biggest single scientific project here.

-- Mechanical engineer Robert Pernic, educated at the Milwaukee School of Engineering and now based at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, oversees a variety of exotic telescopes that exploit the dry and steady air above the South Pole to peer deep into the infrared and sub-millimetric universe.

-- UW-Madison wildlife ecologist Christine Ribic is in a remote field camp at Cape Bird, studying the shifts in range and distribution of Adelie penguins.

-- UW-Madison climatologist Charles Stearns leads the ongoing effort to build and maintain a network of automated weather stations that cover the continent.

-- Glaciologist Charles Bentley, a professor emeritus at UW-Madison, is the principal investigator for the Ice Coring and Drilling Service, based at the UW Space Science and Engineering Center. Ice cores from Antarctica contain clues to more than 100,000 years of the Earth's climate. Pulling scientifically valid cores from the ice is not only a science, but also a high art. Wisconsin ice drillers are among the world's best.

Almost all of the American work is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, which in 1999 spent $183 million on polar research and $63 million on logistics in Antarctica.

The Wisconsin influence, much of it connected to UW-Madison, has grown over the years, with more scientists pulling in more research money, which in turn pulls in more scientists and more money, and on and on. Halzen, who has been based at Madison for 30 years, praises the one-of-a-kind precision instruments that come out of the UW-Madison-run Physical Sciences Lab in Stoughton, the resources available at the university's Space Science and Engineering Center and the money that pours out of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

"For people who want to do big science, there are very few places left to go," he says. "I came here because this was a world-class university."

Working in Antarctica is fraught with problems. Weather can wreak havoc on the best of plans, and getting material -- not to mention people -- in and out can be a nightmare.

Johnathan Thom, a UW-Madison atmospheric scientist, is spending the first part of this month preparing for an unprecedented mission: landing on a huge iceberg in the Ross Sea and wiring it up with instruments and a weather station.

Thom's work is part of Stearns' overall effort and is intended to shed light on the physics of large iceberg movement.

But his weather equipment is back in New Zealand, and he won't be able to test it in advance of his mission, and he and his partner, Rob Flint, have just been denied until mid-January the use of a Twin Otter airplane, which lands on skis and is popular with scientists taking equipment to remote locations.

This is Thom's second trip to Antarctica, and the glitches have him concerned. It's the 10th trip for Flint, a late replacement for UW-Madison researcher George Weidner, who suffered a hernia and could not make the trip. Flint is more accustomed to the supply-line problems.

McMurdo Station, where they are making preparations, is the largest of three U.S. bases; about 1,000 people are crammed into the station during the warm months. Some return again and again; Bentley has been to the continent 18 times.

Isbell says the first moments after being dropped off at a research site are mesmerizing.

"After the plane leaves, all you hear is the wind," he said.

No traffic noise. No planes overhead or trains in the distance. No interruption.

"When you get back to McMurdo Station," he said, "it's like coming to New York City."

Science agency funds journalist

Ernie Mastroianni, a former picture editor with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was visiting Antarctica and the South Pole as a guest of the National Science Foundation. The agency, which funds most of the U.S. scientific research in Antarctica, selects a few members of the news media each year to travel the continent.

Because of the logistical difficulties in traveling to and around the continent, the foundation provides transportation, room and board from New Zealand. The agency has no input on photographs or stories.

Mastroianni, who left Milwaukee the day after Christmas 2000, was focusing his attention on the numerous Wisconsin-based scientists, researchers and engineers who are working in Antarctica or have projects there.