International collaboration brought to the AMISOR project

Initial data results and interpretation from the AMISOR project are now beginning to appear in the international scientific arena with presentations in recent years at Nagaoka, Japan (2000), Bergen, Norway (2002), Cambridge, England (2003), and Milan, Italy (2003). In the meantime we have established excellent networking links with a number of institutions that this season led to the establishment of two collaborative work agreements for the summer. The Polar Research Institute of China sent three expeditioners to conduct ground surveys around the drilling site using GPS (Zhang Xiaohong) and ice radar (Wang Dali) to better understand the dynamics of the ice shelf, and provided an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) to be added to the scientific instrumentation to collect vital information on the vertical structure of water currents beneath the shelf over annual cycles (Chen Hongxia). Future operations may see ice core drilling operations conducted alongside the HWD boreholing. This collaborative work further strengthens the ties between Davis and Zhong Shan stations, where excellent interaction already exists.
On the basis of the permeable marine ice detected deep in the ice shelf at our previous drill site, NASA-JPL (Pasadena, USA) sent Jaret Matthews with their ice borehole probe to record imagery through downward and sideward looking video camera units. With the JPL probe we were able to follow the transition in the ice from compacted firn near the surface, through continental meteoric ice, into the marine ice layer, and the gradation to brine pockets and honeycomb nature of the ice at great depth. Valuable insight may be gained from this into the still not well understood formation mechanism of such marine ice layers. Extension of this collaboration may see the camera deployed at one or more future borehole sites.

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