The first is regarding "big picture perspective".
Let me explain what this means. Before my trip, I had studied for my comprehensive exam quite comprehensively. I had proposed to do research in the west Antarctic Peninsula region and I understood that the climate was changing rapidly in that area. I knew ice cover every winter was less on the ocean's surface due to warming of air temperature, I knew that glaciers were receding, I knew that the Adelie penguin numbers were declining (they need sea ice to raise young), and that Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins were taking over.
I knew all of this, from 2-dimensional images in a textbook.
At Palmer I saw the receding glacier first hand. The start of the glacier is now well behind (500 meters) where it used to be in 1990. That is a huge melt down! Not to mention some of the older researchers who have been coming to Palmer every year for more than a decade, showed us pictures of the islands around Palmer in the late 90's. The islands are completely covered in snow and ice and when I visited, were only rock! To see that kind of decline in a decade is crazy.
There was also another group studying penguins, all 3 types found in the region. They would go out everyday at 6am, bag and weigh and tag the penguins, sometimes returning at midnight to end their day. Over the course of several years, their research has shown how much the Adelie population has decreased.
I was also very close with the Buggers, a group of wonderful people from Ohio who were studying Antarctica's largest year-round land animal. The Belgica antarctica, a wingless fly, at a whopping 5mm long, it lives, breeds, eats and died on land. The changes in seasons, longer warmer summers and slightly warmer winters have changed the lifecycle (larvae, adult, hibernation) stages of this fly.
The virus group, some of the first scientists to ever study viruses in cold marine ecosystems. They hadn't been there decades, but I can't wait to see what the next decade of their research is going to tell us!
Not only was all this great research going on, but I learned how intimately the entire ecosystem is tied together through these various organisms. To study the penguin activities, the REMUS and glider (autonomous underwater vehicles) scientists followed the penguins and gathered environmental data. They could see where the krill populations were and how the penguins were swimming in those areas (penguins eat krill).
The REMUS could see high levels of chlorophyll or particulate matter and tie that into the marine ecology. Where there are high levels of chlorophyll, there is usually higher heterotrophic bacterial activity (the bacteria we study)! High chlorophyll could also lead to higher zooplankton and higher krill, and thus more food for penguins.
This "big picture perspective" was awesome. We were able to discuss all our ideas in a much larger context than normal. We were also able to set up some future collaborations so that we could all benefit from a larger picture. All in all it's been a great trip and I have come home much more intellectually revived than after studying textbooks for my exam! It's nice to have a first-hand refreshed context of my work :)
