The end-of-season stress
Posted on the 17.02.2012 by Alain Hubert
At this time of year the same question regularly crops up : how shall we manage to complete all the work that has to be done before our time is up ?
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Stress factors
This season, three things have been acting as stress factors : very poor climactic conditions, a team reduced in numbers to its strict minimum, and too tight a budget.
Anyhow, our IPF team is doing its best to finish what has to be done, and to prepare the PEA buildings to withstand the very rough winter season.
We went out with Denis Lombardi (from the Giant Lissan research project) to set up a sismograph to measure both the horizontal and vertical movements of the earth surface, and thus understand the links between the variations in antarctic ice mass and deformations of the earth crust.
Our first problem was to find the right spot. No easy task as the chosen area is a vast glacier whose rocky edges are unstable, some 30 kms from our station. This sismograph will act as a test : we have to check that it is operational, before removing it on february 19th and deciding whether to set up a number of them in the same area next year. This should enable us to study the separation of the african and antarctic continents some 500 million years ago.
Everybody is busy preparing for winter
Meanwhile, Elie Verleyen (from Ghent university) has done some research on the Open Top Chambers. These are small acetate greenhouses which simulate how future climate change might affect micro-organisms living inside them. These boxes had been installed three years ago on the Teltet ridge, a nunatak 7 kms East of the PEA. They have miraculously withstood the harshness of three winters. On this occasion, Elie took advantage of improved weather conditions and was able to set up two additional microlabs.
Otherwise, everybody is busy preparing for winter. Jacob is checking again the WTU (Water Treatment Unit), Erik and Karel are checking the power units and Craig is setting up our fire protection system before the onset of winter.
Minor tasks...
I’d like to turn to another aspect of our base’s life. Besides the maintenance tasks, there are lots of other jobs which are seldom spoken of, yet are essential. Such as cleaning up the site, a daily duty. These chores are done with the same professional care as are our main duties -yet those who look after them are seldom spoken of. Here at PEA however, we have the same high esteem for tasks major or minor. They are the very framework of our base : if the menial jobs weren’t done properly, scientific research couldn’t go on. It is a shame that in the eyes of the Belgian government agencies, we aren’t held in very high esteem and thus funds don’t follow.
Soon the plane will land...
© IPF
