Dr Andrew Klein delivering the talk.
Environmental Monitoring Project at the Largest Research Station in Antarctica
By Dr. Debra J. Enzenbacher
On 23 August 2011, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) hosted a Visiting Guest Speaker Session titled “Detecting the imprint of humans on Antarctica: A case study from McMurdo Station”.
The talk was delivered by Dr. Andrew Klein, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, College of Geosciences at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, USA. Results were presented from the environmental monitoring project he has been codelivering with colleagues at the largest research facility in Antarctica, McMurdo Station on Ross Island, which is run by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of the United States Antarctic Program.
McMurdo Station has been occupied permanently since 1955 and its population often exceeds 1000. The research team has studied human impact on the local environment in and around the station since 1999. Station operations have led to a number of localised terrestrial and marine environmental impacts that are limited generally to within a few hundred metres of the station. On land, petroleum hydrocarbons and anthropogenic metals are the most common environmental contaminants, but most contamination levels are not thought to elicit biological responses. To date, this study has found that within a few hundred metres of the station, in
McMurdo Sound, chemical contamination and organic enrichment have reduced marine benthic integrity.
A version of this talk was presented at this year’s Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM XXXIV) in Buenos Aires, Argentina by Dr. Mahlon C. Kennicutt II from the Department of Oceanography, College of Geosciences, Texas A&M University. These research findings have been published in a number of peerreviewed papers. This ongoing research is funded by the United States National Science Foundation and the team is planning to deploy to Antarctica again in November.
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