The chronologies of many lacustrine records suffer from radiocarbon reservoir effects due to the presence of dissolved `dead' carbon or to slow air^water exchange. Here we use the TIMS uranium^thorium disequilibrium method, in conjunction with AMS radiocarbon dating, to determine the age of lacustrine carbonates and to quantify the past radiocarbon reservoir effect in two Antarctic lakes with d...

Glacial erosion patterns on northwest Iccliind are quantified using a Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to interpret subglacial characteristics of part of northwest Iceland affected by ice sheet glaciation. Ice scour lake density is used as a proxy for glacial erosion. Erosion classes are interpreted from variations in the density of lake basins. Lake density was calculated using two...

Abstract Recent drilling successes on Rutford Ice Stream in West Antarctica demonstrate the viability of hot water subglacial access holes to depths >2000 m. Having techniques deep environments reliably paves way for lake exploration beneath thick central Antarctic Sheet. An ideal candidate lake, overlain by ~2650 m ice, identified Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECs), Chile, has led collab...

Abstract Subglacial Lake Whillans lies below around 800 m of Antarctic ice and is isolated from fresh sources photosynthetic organic matter to sustain life. The diverse microbial ecosystems within the lake underlying sediments are therefore dependent on a combination relict, overridden, marine-derived mineral-derived energy. Here, we conduct experiments replicate subglacial erosion involving bo...

SUMMARY Seven maritime Antarctic lakes located on Byers Peninsula (Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands) were surveyed to determine the relationship between planktonic bacterial community composition and environmental features. Specifically, the extent to which factors other than low temperature determine the composition of bacterioplankton assemblages of maritime Antarctic lakes was evalu...

Monitoring life-processes in a frozen lake in the Antarctic raises many practical challenges. To supplement manual monitoring we have designed, built and successfully deployed a remote monitoring device on one of the lakes of interest. This returns data to the Antarctic base over the Iridium satellite phone network. This provides us with a new and uniquely detailed view of the lifeprocesses in ...

The large size of a 1.5-MDa ice-binding adhesin [MpAFP (Marinomonas primoryensis antifreeze protein)] from an Antarctic Gram-negative bacterium, M. primoryensis, is mainly due to its highly repetitive RII (Region II). MpAFP_RII contains roughly 120 tandem copies of an identical 104-residue repeat. We have previously determined that a single RII repeat folds as a Ca2+-dependent immunoglobulin-li...

The green alga Chlamydomonas raudensis is an important primary producer in a number of ice-covered lakes and ponds in Antarctica. A C. raudensis isolate (UWO241) from Lake Bonney in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, like many other Antarctic algae, was found to secrete ice-binding proteins (IBPs), which appear to be essential for survival in icy environments. The IBPs of several Antarctic algae (diatoms...