Where in the world is Maya?: Gearing up for Antarctica!

Sorry for the delay in entries – life has been fairly run-of-the-mill in Columbus as I settled into graduate life. However, I am off to my next adventure and this time I am heading south—way south—to McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. I am part of a group that will be examining dissolved organic matter from the melt water on the surface of the Cotton Glacier. I apologize if your eyes are already glazing over, but hang in there for a couple paragraphs and let me explain this a bit more. Dissolved organic matter (affectionately known as DOM in the organic chemistry world), is a material that is found in all natural waters and is a group of complex compounds that are produced by microbial sources (for example: Phytoplankton, bacteria, etc.) and by the breakdown of terrestrial materials such as plants or animal remains. “Now, why does this really matter?” you may be asking yourself. Well, dissolved organic matter constitutes a very large carbon reservoir—which is significant for climatologists in the assessment of the transformation and distribution of carbon in the environment. The other issue is that dissolved organic carbon plays a critical role in many different chemical reactions including the transport and breakdown of pollutants in the environment. Therefore it is important to understand how this material reacts with different pollutants and what affects its reactivity.

So what does this stuff actually look like? Well, we know that DOM contains carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sometimes nitrogen and sulfur. We generally know some of the partial chemical structures (known as functional groups), but we really don’t know what the rest of the material “looks like.” This is why we are going to Antarctica. Unlike everywhere else in the world, where the DOM is a mixture of both microbial and terrestrial sources, the Antarctic DOM is solely microbial which provides a unique opportunity to characterize the DOM. At this point, you are probably thinking, “whew, that is enough science for me!” So let me continue a little about the travel and NZ.

I left on Saturday afternoon at around 4 pm and after almost 22 hours of airplane time plus layovers, we finally made it to Christchurch, NZ where we will stage for our trip down to the ice. The travel was relatively uneventful, minus the standard unhappy babies and some turbulence. The international flight was actually by far the most enjoyable I have been on as of yet since no one sat next to me in my 4 seat section of the row so I had enough space to stretch out and actually sleep most of the way (unheard of for me on an airplane!). Once in Christchurch, we checked in at the CDC (which stands for the clothing distribution center, not the center for the disease control), grabbed a quick dinner and then completely crashed at the hotel.

My flight schedule:
Columbus to Dallas – 2 hrs 40 min
Dallas to LA – 3 hrs 15 min
LA to Aukland, NZ – 13 hrs 20 min
Aukland to Christchurch, NZ – 1.5 hrs

Today was our “clothing pull” where we were issued our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear. I unpacked and repacked everything to double check all of our chemicals for the trip made it – which they did thank goodness! I went for a run this morning through the Christchurch botanical gardens, which are absolutely beautiful. I really just needed to strech my legs and shake the airplane malase out of them! Traveling just makes me so sluggish. Before I headed to the CDC, I wondered about Christchurch– browsed through a bunch of little shops, watched a giant chess match (see pics below), and listened to a choir sing in the huge cathedral in the town square. It was nice morning. I better head to bed now, we have another big day of traveling tomorrow – I think it is about a 5-6 hr flight down to the ice! I'm going to do my best to keep you all updated, but I hear the connection is slow down at McMurdo!