During this winter Anne Chapuis from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway) and Inga May from the University of Munich joined the education team of the Students on Ice Antarctic Expedition Youth Expedition, one of the most exciting and important contributions to the International Year of Youth and the International Year of Biodiversity.
The journey started in Buenos Aires, after some trouble due to the snow storm in New York, where the group met first and continued their trip with the plan to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is the most southern city in the world and most of the Antarctic expeditions leave here to pass the Drake Passage and finally reach Antarctica. Here the entire group – about 80 people – set sail the 30 of December and head South. During the expedition the students were supervised by a team of scientists and chaperons.
Anne and Inga were together responsible for the glaciology part of the education program and shared their knowledge with the students during several hands-on activities, workshops and lectures.
The highlight was probably the sampling of some ice cores drilled at the so-called Koerner Ice Cap – named after the well-known glaciologist Fritz Koerner – who initially started some years ago with SOI to study these ice caps.
Of course they also joined the lectures and workshops of all the other team members and hence got lots of information about birds and mammals in the Antarctic, the Antarctic treaty, plankton in the oceans and so on.
You can also see their journey at http://www.studentsonice.com/antarctic2010/
