Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 2665 See the link below for public details on this project. The Antarctic environment with its harsh climatic conditions, minimal human activity and its unique ecosystems is unlike any of the World's other environments. As such, it is important that an understanding of the Antarctic environment is developed in order to gain a full appreciation of the impacts of human activities in Antarctica and to determine the most effective means to remediate and protect the Antarctic environment. To achieve these goals, new sensitive and selective techniques for sampling metal contaminant levels in marine sediments are being developed. The project is not an environmental study of the Antarctic environment (ie no metal concentrations in water or sediments), but rather the development of an analytical technique for use in Antarctica. We are still in the process of developing this technique and much of the development phase has involved qualitative assessment rather than generating quantitative data. We are currently trialling the technique in the lab and will conduct field trials in the Derwent Estuary. Taken from the abstract of the referenced paper: A novel binding phase was developed for use in diffusive gradients in thin-film (DGT) sampling for Cu(II) by employing methylthymol blue as a chelating and chromogenic agent. Methylthymol blue was adsorbed onto beads of Dowex 1x8 resin (200-400 mesh) and the resin beads were then immobilised onto an adhesive disc. Analysis of exposed binding discs by either UV-vis spectrophotometry or computer imaging densitometry provided robust quantification of adsorbed Cu(II) in the 0.2-1 micro gcm-2 range, allowing detection at micro gL-1 concentrations in the test solution (ca. 17 micro gL-1 for a 24 h deployment), and in good agreement with established DGT theory. The method was shown to be a potential replacement for binding phases based on Chelex 100 where a colorimetric response to a specific metal is desired.

This dataset contains 102 depth measurements of the water column in Long and Tryne fjords, which are in the northern Vestfold Hills, Prydz Bay, Antarctica. Sea ice thickness and snow thickness were recorded simultaneously. The motivation for this project has been to yield a description of the pupping and moulting habitat of Weddell seals. This information will assist the interpretation of 25+ years of data on seal distribution within that area. Our data were collected between 7th and 13th December 1999. The measurement sites were chosen according to geographical features; their exact location was determined by GPS with an accuracy of about 25m. At each site a 5cm diameter hole was drilled through the sea ice and a weighted measurement tape was lowered through the ice-hole to the bottom. Water depths were measured to the nearest centimetre; ice and snow thicknesses were measured to the nearest millimetre. A minimum depth of less than 3m was found in a narrow channel between small islands immediately west of Shirokaya Bay. The maximum depth of the water column was 222m in the middle basin of Long Fjord. The tidal range for the measured days was less than 0.5m, with tidal corrections applied to the raw data. Water samples were taken in Breid Basin and the middle basin of Long Fjord. These and water samples taken in Snezhnyy Bay [pers. comm. J. Laybourn-Parry, 1999] show aerobic and relatively fresh water for all upper basins. This indicates that even the far basins of both fjords are well mixed despite the drainage of large volumes meltwater from the Antarctic plateau into the fjords. See related URL for data and a spatial summary of the data. See Entry: long_tryne_bathy for an interpolation of bathymetry made using the Topogrid command within the ArcInfo GIS software, version 8.0.2. Coastline and spot height (heights above sea level) data, extracted from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's Vestfold Hills topographic GIS dataset (see Entry: vest_hills_gis), was also used as input data to optimise the interpolation close to the coastline. The fields in this dataset are: day weighpoint lat(dd) long(dd) ice (cm) freeboard(cm) snow(cm) depth(m)