Thursday 5 August 2010, 11:30 AM (AAD Theatrette)

Science in the Spotlight - 15 min showcase presentation from three science programs

Graham Hosie

Environmental Protection and Change

The SCAR Southern Ocean Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey: Achievements, current status and future directions.

The SO-CPR Survey commenced in January 1991 with the purpose of mapping the seasonal, inter-annual and spatial variation in plankton patterns, and to use plankton as sensitive indicators of environmental change to monitor the health of the Southern Ocean. It is now nearly 20 years since the programme started with just few tows south of Australia to being nearly circum-Antarctic involving 14 nations and ships. The actual anniversary of the first tow will be at 09:58 Z on 12 January 2011, but now is the opportune time to reflect on where we have been, what's been achieved with mapping plankton distributions and identifying changes, and where we are going next with developing predictive models of plankton patterns. It's also an appropriate time as about 12 hours earlier my former student Brian Hunt will have delivered an extended version of this talk as a key note presentation at the SCAR Open Science Conference in Buenos Aires.

Philippe Ziegler

Southern Ocean Ecosystems

Assessing data-poor fisheries in the Southern Indian Ocean

New and developing fisheries have typically insufficient biological and fishery-related data to provide comprehensive scientific advice on stock status. Yet without adequate scientific advice, management decisions on fishery harvest have to be made without comprehensive considerations on stock conservation as mandated by the FAO precautionary approach. Here we discuss possible assessment approaches for data-poor fisheries on the example of the Patagonian toothfish fishery in the Indian Ocean Sector of the Southern Ocean.

Neal Young

Ice Ocean Atmosphere and Climate

Winds on Antarctica - We feel it but how can we see the wind from afar?

Wind over the surface of Antarctic is all pervading, and in some areas quite persistent. It buffets and chills us and so we are very aware of it and its effect on ourselves.

Wind transports and redistributes snow over the surface. It can erode snow from the surface, and deposit snow elsewhere and so is the main influence in shaping the snow surface. This re-working of the surface snow modifies the snow properties, and creates roughness at a range of scales in the horizontal, from millimetre to metres and even to kilometres, and in the vertical from millimetres to metres. These take the form of dunes and sastrugi as well as finer textural features. This roughness impacts on how we might travel across Antarctica. It will slow over-snow traverses and lead to equipment breakages. It can also prevent aircraft from landing. And, it modifies the "climate" record in firn and ice cores.

This roughness can be observed from satellites at scales from tens of metres up. But the roughness can also be detected and measured at millimetre / centimetre and larger scales by a mix of techniques that detect the influence of the roughness on the scattering of radiation from radars and from the sun. Other traits visible in the thermal infrared also allow us to in effect "see" the actual surface wind field at any time.