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OPP 06-001 November 2005


Personnel, Stations, and Camps

  1. Personnel
    1. The total number of people entering and leaving Antarctica and the ships over the course of the summer will be about 3,000.  The U.S. Antarctic Program peak population at any given moment will be about 1,600 on land and 300 on the ships.
    2. Approximately 70 percent of U.S. Antarctic Program science personnel and >90 percent of operations personnel transit New Zealand and McMurdo
    3. About one-fourth of science personnel and <10 percent of operations personnel transit South America to Antarctic Peninsula locations


  2. Year-round research stations
    1. Palmer (65°S 64°W), Anvers Island, west coast of Antarctic Peninsula—marine biology and other disciplines, population 10 to 44
    2. McMurdo (78°S 168°E), Ross Island, southwest corner of Ross Sea—all research disciplines, operational hub, logistics center, population 235 to about 1,200
    3. Amundsen-Scott South Pole (90° S), continental interior at geographic South Pole—astronomy and astrophysics, meteorology and climate studies, population 100 to 240


  3. Summer research camps
    1. Siple Dome (Siple Coast, West Antarctica).  Geophysics1 including a GPS array; automatic weather stationss2 .
    2. Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide Camp (West Antarctica).  Glaciology, including ice-core sampling, radar surveys, and installation of a magnetometer; automatic weather stations; GPS monitoring of bedrock motion.
    3. Small field camps at Beardmore Glacier (Transantarctic Mountains), Fosdick Mountains, and Patriot Hills
    4. Numerous camps in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, on sea ice, and on Ross Island.
    5. Odell Glacier (central Transantarctic Mountains), alternative landing site


End notes
[1]http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~sak/Tides
[2] The automatic weather station project, University of Wisconsin, is described at http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/aws.html
 
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