The Taylor Valley

Pyramids right out in the open and cities in the sky

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The Taylor Valley is the southernmost of the three large Dry Valleys in the Transantarctic Mountains, Victoria Land, located west of McMurdo Sound at approximately 77°37′S 163°00′E. The valley extends from Taylor Glacier in the west to McMurdo Sound at Explorers Cove at the northwest head of New Harbour in the east and is about 29 kilometres (18 mi) long. It was once occupied by the receding Taylor Glacier, from which it derives its name. Taylor Valley contains Lake Bonney in the west (inward), and Lake Fryxell in the east (coastward), and Lake Hoare, Lake Chad, Lake Popplewell, Mummy Pond and Parera Pond close together between the two. Further east of Lake Bonney is Pearse Valley. Taylor Valley is separated from Wright Valley in the north by Asgard Range, and from Ferrar Glacier in the south by Kukri Hills. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Valley ]

Ladies and gentlemen, that of coarse is the wiki version of the 'Mainstream' simple description of this most secret place in antarctica, and, you may notice little citations for wiki all over the place in this piece; I do reference wiki a lot. Since we are discussing wiki - the reason I use wiki is the reason everyone uses wiki - it's quick and simple and generally is all facts with little narrative on most matters scientific.

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The average person  has no idea just how remote a place the Taylor Valley really is and clearly the Navy Seal delivering to all of us his great story hasn't even bothered to identify the absolute impossibility of reaching this location on foot, which in this neck of the woods is the only way and short of a helicopter and the supporting ships you need to LAUNCH a helicopter, never mind landing one safely any where near this supposed and i believe fabricated entrance.  I really see no other way to arrive at this solid black hypabyssal, or sub volcanic rock entrance; This entrance that is impossible to see in any other aerial photography except the photo supplied by Linda Moulton Howe's Graphics dept. and her navy seal Character / bag man. The entire narrative / tall tale falls apart right at the beginning, right where it ought too for all of humanities sake. We have enough fabricators masquerading as Journalists today and I really don’t think we need another one.

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The Image posted directly below was supplied by Linda Moulton Howe and is another perfect example of the difference between entertainment and scientific fact. AS I MENTIOEND EARLIER, question everything! (Even my work)

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Below - A Photoshopped over head shot of the Taylor Valley and the Taylor glacier

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https://www.earthfiles.com/antarctica/

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The Above photo = Linda Moulton Howes Accompanying art provided to Illustrate her guests story as a fact is indeed a Fraudulent photograph used to bolster a fabricated and convoluted UN -TRUE story.

Below - Here is what it this area really looks like when you DO NOT photoshop a fake entrance into the image. I used the exact same NASA image as Linda Moulton Howes team to provide DIRECT VERIFICATIN of the photoshopped forgery BEING PEDDLED ABOVE BY LINDA MOULTON HOWES ART DEPT.  To be fair to Linda, she is just asking the questions and it is her guest who is providing the tall tale, However i do of course think this production was all synchronized and even rehearsed for entertainment purposes as the entire film / interview is being packaged at a documentary and this type of obfuscation and story telling does the real researcher NO GOOD AT ALL in their quest for the truth.

https://www.earthfiles.com/antarctica/ 

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The McMurdo Dry Valleys which sit between the Transantarctic Mountains and the Ross Sea, are among the most hostile, inhospitable, and driest places on earth.

McMurdo Dry Valleys are a line of snowless valleys from Antartica. Dry valleys are so named because of their extreme low humidity and lack of snow or ice cover.The region is one of the most extreme deserts in the world, and includes many interesting features, including Lake Vida and the Onyx River, the largest in Antarctica. 

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MEET THE THREE MCMURDO DRY VALLEYS

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There are three major valleys that carve out of the Transantarctic Mountains and toward the Ross Sea. The three McMurdo Dry Valleys are:

• · Taylor Valley: The furthest south of the three valleys and home-sweet-home to Taylor Glacier and the infamous Blood Waterfall. Iron-oxide is what’s actually spewing out of the side of Taylor Glacier, although it resembles BLOOD...it really isn't blood.
• · Wright Valley: The middle of the three valleys and home to the Onyx River, the largest river in all of Antarctica.
• · Victoria Valley: The northernmost valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the location of Lake Vida, the largest lake of the three valleys.
• · Meet the others: There are more valleys that comprise the McMurdo Dry Valleys than the three giants. They are: McKelvey, Belham, Barwick, Alanta, Stuiver, Wall, Virginia, Priscu, Pearse, Miers, Garwood, and Marshall & The Asgard Range
  
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The term "getting away from it all " really works in the Taylor Valley where there is literally nothing except rock and ice ... in fact a lot of writers contend that the mars rover is here taking photos for NASA and NASA is pretending the Taylor valley is MARS.

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....ALOT OF WRITERS WOULD BE WRONG.

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Life in a place it shouldnt exist

FOR PERSPECTIVE LET ME SHOW YOU ON A MAP EXACTLY WHERE I AM TAKING YOU ....

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In 1903 Scott and his party of explorers arrived in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Upon arrival it was quickly believed that life did not exist here, it just could not exist here. Between the extreme, cold, harsh winds and extreme lack of humidity it only made sense. Since then scientists have proved otherwise. Researchers have found Endolithic photosynthetic bacteria within rocks found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. These anaerobic bacteria survive by metabolizing sulfur and iron found beneath Taylor Glacier inside Taylor Dry Valley. These findings are what give the glimmer of the possibility of life on Mars.

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So how did the McMurdo Dry Valleys get so dry?

Antarctica is almost completely covered in a mile or more of ice. And then there are the Dry Valleys, sitting there nearly snow-free. Strange isnt it? What causes this, you may wonder: Katabatic winds paired with the natural barricade formed by the Transantarctic Mountains preventing ice from the East Antarctic Shelf from entering the dry valleys and continuing on down into the Ross Sea, making the extreme climate of the McMurdo Dry Valleys unique and oh-so-extreme.

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Antarctica is almost completely covered in a mile or more of ice. And then there are the Dry Valleys, sitting there nearly snow-free. Strange isnt it? What causes this, you may wonder: Katabatic winds paired with the natural barricade formed by the Transantarctic Mountains preventing ice from the East Antarctic Shelf from entering the dry valleys and continuing on down into the Ross Sea, making the extreme climate of the McMurdo Dry Valleys unique and oh-so-extreme. 

The Transantarctic Mountains meet Katabatic Winds

Crash course real quick here: Katabatic Winds are caused when dense and cold air are being pushed downward. The wild and extreme katabatic Winds of the dry valleys partnered up with the mountainous Transantarctic barricade make McMurdo Dry Valleys into one of the driest places on Earth. These katabatic winds can reach 200 miles per hour (320 KPH). When the high-speed katabatic winds descend, the wind heats up and will evaporate any snow, ice or water in their path. With all that said, the valleys are typically windy and can see temperatures hover around a balmy -67 F (-55 C).

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Mummified to the core

One of the interesting relics of the McMurdo Dry Valleys is the mummified crab eater seal carcasses (Above) strewn throughout the valleys. Life has existed here, big life. Radiocarbon dating performed by zoologists at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia has estimated that these mummified seals found in the area are approximately 560-780 years old. What Id really like to know is how? How on Earth did they get out here?

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So why exactly is Taylor Glacier Bleeding?

Shortly after the discovery of the Blood Waterfall, red algae was thought to be the original culprit. Upon further research, it was found that Taylor Glaciers nicked artery is due to iron oxide from an ancient saline lake trapped under the glacier, somewhere around two million years ago.

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Say Hello to one of Earths only cold-based glaciers

Taylor Glacier is one of the very few cold-based glaciers on Earth. What is a cold-based glacier, you ask? Cold-based glaciers are frozen to the ground underneath them. The ice is slowly pushed forward over the course of years by their own immense weight. This explains the glaciers movement as it spills down from the Victoria Land Plateau and into Taylor Valley. Cold-based glaciers are somewhat unusual in appearance to their wet-based counterparts as they appear free of those deep, Tide-detergent-blue crevasses. In comparison, most glaciers the world over are wet-based and as they move they scrape over bedrock beneath, creating major erosion and picking up debris along the way.

so why exactly do i keep going on and on and on about The Taylor Valley?

Well, among the more interesting things to see in the Taylor valley is the "City in the sky"

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AND NOW A WORD FROM MY GOOD FRIEND

Michael Studinger 

MICHAEL WAS EXTREMELY HELPFUL WHEN IT CME TO DOING THE HARDCORE RESEARCH IN THE TAYLOR VALLEY



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Michael Studinger received the Ph.D. degree in1998 from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. He is with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, USA. Before joining NASA he was a research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York for 12 years. His research interests include physical processes in polar regions, linking ice sheet dynamics with the subglacial environment, such as subglacial lakes. He is using integrated sets of aerogeophysical data, including gravity, magnetics, ice-penetrating radar, and laser altimeter measurements to answer key questions in solid Earth geophysics and glaciology. His main research projects focus on the role of the subglacial environment in a global framework.

Cryospheric Sciences

Where is the cryosphere? When scientists talk about the cryosphere, they mean the places where water is in its solid form, where low temperatures freeze water and turn it into ice. People most often think of the cryosphere as being at the top and bottom of our planet, in the
ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC REGIONS

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While flying over Antarctica aboard a P-3 aircraft in November 2013, Operation IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger took this photograph (top) of Taylor Valley, one of Antarctica’s unique dry valleys. Home to Taylor Glacier, striking rock outcrops, and Blood Falls, the valley is one of the most remote and geologically exotic places in the world. A satellite image (bottom) captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 shows a portion of the same area from above.

While ice and snow covers most of Antarctica, Taylor Valley and the other dry valleys are conspicuously bare. Inland mountains—the Transantarctic Range—force moisture out of the air as it passes over, leaving the valley in a precipitation shadow. The lack of precipitation leaves dramatic sequences of exposed rock. In both the satellite image and photograph, the tan bands are sandstone layers from the Beacon Supergroup, a series of sedimentary rock layers formed at the bottom of a shallow sea between 250 million and 400 million years ago. Throughout that period, Earth’s southern continents were locked into the supercontinent Gondwana.

The dark band of rock that divides the sandstone is dolerite (sometimes called diabase), a volcanic rock that forms underground. The distinctive dolerite intrusion—or sill—is a remnant of a massive volcanic plumbing system that produced major eruptions about 180 million years ago. The eruptions likely helped tear Gondwana apart.

The dominant feature in the photograph—Taylor Glacier—is notable as well. Like other glaciers in the Dry Valleys, it is “cold-based,” meaning its bottom is frozen to the ground below. The rest of the world’s glaciers are “wet-based,” meaning they scrape over the bedrock, picking up and leaving obvious piles of debris (moraines) along their edges.

Cold-based glaciers flow more like putty, pushed forward by their own weight. Cold-based glaciers pick up minimal debris, cause little erosion, and leave only small moraines. They even look different from above. Instead of having surfaces full of crevasses, cold-based glaciers are comparatively flat and smooth.

At the lower right of the photograph, “Blood Falls” appears as a small, dark smudge. The name refers to the stain of red that coats part of the glacier and seeps down toward Lake Bonney in a pattern that makes it look like a blood-red waterfall. The red comes from microbes living within a pool of ancient seawater that has been trapped beneath Taylor Glacier for at least 1.5 million years. Due to the activity of the microbes, the seawater is enriched with ferrous hydroxide (an iron-containing salt), which quickly oxidizes and turns red as it seeps out of a crack in the glacier.

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Most of Antarctica is covered by ice that may exceed 3000 m in depth, but some areas of the continent are ice free. The McMurdo Dry Valleys, at 76°30′−78°30′ S, 160–164° E, form the largest (approximately 4800 km²) of the ice-free areas. This location has also been a US National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site since 1993. The dry valleys are among the most extreme deserts on the planet, far colder and drier than deserts elsewhere. Mean annual temperatures in Taylor Valley (primary location of the McMurdo LTER) range from −16 °C to −21 °C, and precipitation is less than 10 cm annually. The dry valleys contain perennially ice-covered lakes, ephemeral streams, glaciers, and extensive areas of both soils and exposed bedrock. Despite these extreme climatic conditions, biological communities exist in the lakes, streams, and soils. These communities must be adapted to unusual physical conditions driven by both climate and latitude, which include extreme desiccation, freeze-thaw cycles, high winds, and unique light-dark cycles. Such environmental constraints are beyond the tolerance of many groups of organisms (Friedmann 1982,Freckman and Virginia 1997).

The McMurdo Dry Valleys are extremely climate-sensitive environments. Small variations in physical environment and climatic conditions within the dry valleys have profound effects on life in these ecosystems. Although Antarctica as a whole is undoubtedly highly climate sensitive (Smith et al. 1999), the McMurdo Dry Valleys are likely to be particularly sensitive because small climatic changes can lead to extreme variations in hydrologic regime (Dana et al. 1998,Fountain et al. 1998). This magnification has been referred to as polar amplification. It is now clear that what would, in more temperate regions, be considered very small variations in temperature and, to some degree, humidity and precipitation have potentially great impact in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

THE COMBINATION OF WEAK SPATIAL LINKAGES AND A NUTRIENT-DEFICIENT ENVIRONMENT IN THE DRY VALLEYS MAKE THE LEGACY OF PAST CLIMATIC CONDITIONS HIGHLY RELEVANT TO CURRENT DRY VALLEY ECOSYSTEMS

The presence of liquid water remains the primary limiting condition for life in Antarctica (Kennedy 1993). Therefore, processes that affect the formation, location, and distribution of liquid water greatly influence ecological function and biological diversity in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Understanding the role of present and past climate variability on the distribution of liquid water has been a major emphasis of the McMurdo LTER. In this article, we describe the physical environment of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and outline the current understanding of the climatic controls in the dry valleys. The data we present will also provide background for the more biologically focused manuscripts on the McMurdo Dry Valleys in this issue of BioScience.

Setting

The McMurdo Dry Valleys exist because the Transantarc-tic Mountains block much of the flow of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet toward McMurdo Sound (Chinn 1990). In addition, at the level of the valley floor, ablation (mass loss in all its forms) of snow and ice exceeds accumulation during all seasons. Glaciers descend from the surrounding mountains; the largest glaciers reach the valley floor and terminate in cliffs 20 m high. During the warm periods of the austral summer, ephemeral streams flow from the glaciers toward the lakes. Taylor Valley is approximately 35 km long and contains three major lakes (Lakes Bonney, Hoare, and Fryxell) and more than 24 ephemeral streams (Figure 1). The physical appearance of Taylor Valley and the dry valleys is characterized by sandy gravel valley floors with large expanses of exposed bedrock (Figure 2). Much current debate exists over the pre-Quaternary climatic history of this region of Antarctica (e.g., Miller and Mabin 1998).



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A recently developed geomorphological model divides the dry valleys into coastal, intermediate, and interior regions (Marchant and Denton 1996), which correspond roughly to regions that have been at low, intermediate, and high elevation since the mid-Pliocene (Wilch et al. 1993). The low-elevation coastal areas show modern soil movement; mid-elevation intermediate areas show evidence of soil activity only on moist, north-facing slopes; and soils of the high-elevation interior regions have changed little over the last 4 million or so years. The coastal zone corresponds to lowland soils containing lacustrine organic matter and marine signatures in glacial tills in both the upper and lower reaches of the valley (Burkins et al. in press). Interior regions are upland areas in high mountains (e.g., the Kukri Hills and Asgard Range) adjacent to Taylor Valley (Figure 1). The intermediate region corresponds to the higher elevations of Taylor Valley that lie between the mountains and the lowland areas.

These lower, middle, and upper elevations have experienced different microenvironmental regimes, which have differentially affected local biological communities, as indicated by the sizes and isotopic signatures of organic matter and nutrient concentrations (Burkins et al. in press). Understanding the historic context of landscapes is crucial to understanding all ecosystems (Swanson et al. 1988), but such an understanding is particularly important in the case of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where past climatic variations dictate current ecosystem status. Because of its polar location and the paucity of biota, the primary disturbances in the McMurdo Dry Valley ecosystem have been climatic, and landscape pattern has been primarily controlled by climatic, and not biotic, processes.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys region is considered a cold desert. The very low amount of precipitation falls mainly as snow, although small amounts of rain have been known to occur during the summer (Keys 1980). At Lake Vanda in Wright Valley, average annual snowfall over 3 years was 6 cm water equivalent, with an annual maximum of 10 cm and a minimum of 0.6 cm (Bromley 1985). Easterly winds bring precipitation as low-pressure systems pass over open water in the Ross Sea. These systems then drop moisture in the dry valleys as the air begins to rise over the Transantarctic Mountains (Bromley 1985). Precipitation decreases westward in the valleys, as the distance from the ocean increases (Keys 1980,Fountain et al. in press). Winds are typically high in the dry valleys, with monthly average wind speeds in Taylor Valley ranging from 2 m/s to 4 m/s (Clow et al. 1988). Wind-carved ventifacts are common in the valleys and testify to the windy environment.

Glaciers in Taylor Valley are generally polar alpine, being characterized by ice temperatures that are well below freezing, with the base of the glaciers frozen to the rock substrate. The alpine glaciers flow from the Asgard Range on the north side of the valley and from the Kukri Hills on the south side (Figure 1). However, Taylor Glacier, the largest glacier in the valley, flows into the valley from the west (Figure 1) and is not an alpine glacier but rather an outlet glacier of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The glaciers flowing from the Asgard Range are, on the average, three times the area of those flowing from the Kukri Hills. This difference results from topographic differences—the Asgard Range forms higher and larger snow accumulation basins. Also, the glaciers in the Kukri Hills are smaller because they are exposed to more solar radiation resulting from their north-facing aspect and from the higher solar angle when the sun is in the north.

In contrast to glaciers in temperate alpine regions, the mass gains and losses of the glaciers in Taylor Valley are relatively small. Our observations of the glaciers (Fountain et al. 1998) indicate that approximately 10–30 cm of snow accumulates in the upper zones and approximately 6–15 cm is lost from the ablation zone, amounts that are consistent with results from studies in the adjacent Wright Valley (Bull and Carnein 1970,Chinn 1980). The important components of ablation in Taylor Valley are evaporation, sublimation, and melting. Preliminary results from Canada Glacier collected from 1993 to 1998 indicate that during the summer, evaporation and sublimation account for 70% of the mass loss from the glacier surface; the remaining 30% is lost by melt (Lewis et al. 1998). The snow in the upper reaches of the glaciers is cold and dry, and no snowmelt has been observed directly, although the presence of thin ice lenses in the snowpack does indicate previous snowmelt events. It is most likely that the snowmelt is refrozen in the snow and that no runoff from the accumulation zone occurs. Meltwater generated in the ablation zone, including the 20 m high ice cliffs that often form the termini of many of the glaciers, is the primary souce of water in Taylor Valley.

Ephemeral streams transport the glacial meltwater to terminal lakes that lose water only through sublimation and evaporation. Like terminal lakes elsewhere (e.g., Great Salt Lake), dry valley lakes are sensitive to small changes in water inflow. The only source of water to the streams is glacial melt during the austral summer (Conovitz et al. 1998). These ephemeral streams are channeled, and, given the absence of rain and overland flow, the soils between streams are dry, gaining moisture only from occasional snowmelt and sublimating permafrost below (McKay et al. 1998). Snowfall in the dry valleys does not contribute significantly to the streams or to the general hydrology of the valleys because it usually sublimates before melting (Chinn 1981). However, the accumulated snow piled against the glacier termini by winds that sweep the valley floor or by snow drifting off the glaciers (Fountain et al. 1998) does contribute to the early spring melt before disappearing early in the summer season.

Continuous permafrost occurs at shallow depths a few tens of centimeters beneath the soil surface (Campbell et al. 1998). Therefore, groundwater flow in the dry valleys is probably limited to the near-surface hyporheic zone (the saturated zone adjacent to and under the stream channel) along the margins of stream channels (McKnight et al. 1999). However, seepage meters in the bottom of Lake Hoare indicate a very small flux of groundwater, pointing to the possibility of deep groundwater movement in Taylor Valley (Scott Tyler, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, unpublished data). Substantial groundwater flow has, however, been observed in Wright Valley (Cartwright and Harris 1981).

The ephemeral streams of Taylor Valley lack allochthonous organic input, but they can support relatively high standing algal biomass with low primary productivity because grazing losses are low (McKnight and Tate 1997,Webster and Meyer 1997). The streams are important to the lakes as sources of nutrients and organic carbon and as conduits of water to replace the lake water lost by evaporation and sublimation. Glacier meltwaters are a source of nutrients, especially for the spring flush of particulate matter accumulated on the ice during winter and during low flows late in the season (Howard-Williams et al. 1998). Solutes are also generated by weathering of streambed materials (Lyons et al. 1998a) and from water draining the hyporheic zone.

Lakes up to 80 m deep occupy the lowest portions of each of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and are covered with perennial ice that is 3–6 m thick. A moat of water forms at the edge of the lakes during most summers as the ice near the shore melts completely. Because the lakes are permanently hydrated and the ice cover provides a buffer from seasonal temperature fluctuations and protection from mechanical mixing by wind, they are the only dry valley habitat that supports microbial activity year-round. The lakes have abundant planktonic and benthic microbial populations (Seaburg et al. 1983,Wharton et al. 1983,Vincent 1988,Lizotte and Priscu 1998), and their food webs consist of viruses, bacteria, algae, heterotrophic protozoans, and rotifers (Kepner et al. 1997,1998,1999Lay-bourn-Parry et al. 1997, James et al. 1998,Priscu et al. 1999). The ice covers of these lakes also harbor a community of prokaryotic phototrophs and heterotrophs that produce new carbon (Adams et al. 1998,Fritsen et al. 1998,Priscu et al. 1998). Particulate organic matter synthesized within the ice cover and released through passages in the ice to the lake bottom may provide the biological inoculum for some of the benthic organisms that inhabit the lake.

The glaciers in the dry valleys also provide habitat for microbial activity (Wharton et al. 1985John C. Priscu, unpublished data). Melt pools that form on the lower portion of many glaciers become traps for aeolian-transport-ed material. This darker material absorbs more solar radiation than the surrounding ice and melts into the glacier, forming cylindrical water-filled depressions called cry-oconite holes.

The main factors controlling the level of biodiversity in the dry valleys are the availability of water and of physical energy (solar radiation and temperature). Because the dry valleys are typically near the minimum level of adequate energy and water to sustain living organisms, spatial and temporal variations in these factors control the large-scale patterns of life in the dry valleys (Moorhead and Priscu 1998). These patterns are modified by the biogeochemical gradients of the soils and lakes, which are related to climate and geological setting. Energy and water availability are more strongly interrelated in the dry valleys than in temperate systems because all of the water available to the ecosystem exists in the frozen reservoirs of the glaciers that surround the valley. Energy is required to melt the ice and create water. In the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the freezing/ melting temperature of ice (0 °C) is a binary switch. When air temperature is below 0 °C, little or no surface water is present and the lakes represent the only viable habitat in the valleys, but one whose long-term existence is dependent on an influx of water. Above 0 °C, meltwater is produced and fluvial and lacustrine habitats flourish. Presently, this period of glacier melt, which produces liquid water, usually occurs during a 6–10 week period within the austral summer from November through January.

Spatial changes: landscape. Spatial variations in topography created local depressions that filled with water to form the lakes observed today. The Taylor Valley lakes (Figure 1) were formed, in part, by the advance of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into Taylor Valley approximately 40,000 years ago (Denton et al. 1989). Lake Washburn was produced as the ice sheet melted. The resulting liquid water was blocked by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and did not flow into McMur-do Sound (Figure 1). The three lakes observed in the valley today are remnants of this large glacial lake (Doran et al. 1994,Lyons et al. 1999). The debris deposited by the ice sheet forms a wide, low ridge along the marine outlet of Taylor Valley and created the enclosed basin that is now occupied by Lake Fryxell. The division between the Lake Bonney basin at the western end of Taylor Valley and the Lake Fryxell basin at the eastern end is the Nussbaum Riegel, a 700 m bedrock ridge that bisects Taylor Valley. The Lake Hoare basin is the smallest of the three main basins and is essentially an ice-dammed lake. If Canada Glacier, which forms part of the boundary of Lake Hoare, were to retract, Lake Hoare would flow east, into Lake Fryxell.

The streams of the McMurdo Dry Valleys flow through an unconsolidated alluvium and are remarkably similar throughout the valleys. This uniformity of substrate results in many recurring features of the streambeds and the stream banks. Which features are expressed in each stream seems to be controlled by the topography and by hydrologic and periglacial processes. Perched deltas also exert an important geomorphic influence on the landscape. These deltas are relicts of previous climatic conditions, when streams deposited their sediment loads into lakes with much higher water levels. In particular, the configuration of the larger rocks in the stream channels is controlled mostly by fluvial and periglacial processes, in contrast to the large rocks on the landscape away from the stream channels, whose configuration is controlled by the strong winds.

In general, the common characteristics of the streams, moving downstream from the stream source at a glacier to a lake, include:

• At the base and sides of the source glaciers, the streams flow along the moraine and through or around the calved ice. These streams are often frozen over with a thin ice cover.

• In areas of ice-bound moraine, there is no alluvium, and the stream flows over and around the frozen rocks.

• In steep gradient reaches, the active channel is approximately 5–20 m across, with steep stream banks at the angle of repose of the alluvium. Large jumbled rocks are present in the streambed, with deposited sediment abundant at the margins of the active channel.

• In moderate-gradient reaches, the active channel is com posed of rocks that are wedged together in a flat stone pavement, with steep stream banks at the angle of repose of the alluvium and less sediment deposition than in steep gradient reaches.

• In both steep and moderate gradient reaches, the streams can cut through a perched delta containing organic-rich sediment.

• In shallow-gradient reaches near the lakes or second-order streams in valley bottoms, which receive sediment from tributaries, a sandy braided channel exists, with low banks at the angle of repose of the alluvium.

These characteristic morphologies control the water-velocity distribution in the cross-section and the substrate for growth of algal mats, presenting distinct habitats for algal communities in the streams. Studies of stream algal communities show that different groups of algal species occur in different habitats. Algal abundance is greatest in reaches with stone pavements and abundant perennial cyanobacterial mats and lowest in streams flowing through ice-bound moraine and along the base of glaciers (McKnight et al. 1998). The spatial distribution of these habitats thus determines the spatial distribution of algal biomass in the streams.

Many old deposits of alluvium or residual talus slopes in arid regions develop armors of closely packed material or stone pavements (Breed et al. 1989); a similar phenomenon occurs in the dry valleys of Antarctica (Campbell and Claridge 1987). The stone pavements in shallow-gradient streams in the McMurdo Dry Valleys probably form through the long-term action of the freezing of the saturated alluvium at the end of the summer and the thawing of the alluvium at the beginning of the summer; as a result of this action, the larger rocks are rotated until the larger sides are upward and these rocks then become wedged together across the streambed. The high porosity of the alluvium could be a factor in the freeze-thaw action. On steeper slopes, the hyporheic zone may drain before sufficient freeze-thaw action can line the streambed with larger rocks wedged together. In addition, the high flow velocities during seasonal large-flow events in these higher-gradient channels may erode the sand between the rocks near the central flow region of the stream, further destabilizing the rocks.

Thus, topographic differences in Taylor Valley control the distribution of different stream habitats and, in turn, the abundance of algal communities in the streams. In the Lake Fryxell basin, the valley sides on the south side of the basin are more gently sloped than those on the north side, and there are long reaches in which stone pavements and thick perennial mats of filamentous cyanobacteria occur (McKnight et al. 1998). In the Lake Bonney basin, the sides of the valley are much steeper, and steep-gradient streams are common. Consequently, stone pavements are not found, and algal growth is restricted mainly to colonial green algae growing on the underside of rocks. Sediment movement undoubtedly limits algal mat abundance in the shallow-gradient reaches of stream outlets to the lakes. The presence or absence of stream algal mats has important consequences for the planktonic lake communities because these algal communities absorb nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate (McKnight et al. 1998,Moorhead and Priscu 1998), thereby decreasing the flux of these nutrients to the lakes. These communities may, however, also fix nitrogen and release carbon and nitrogen to the lakes via stream export (Downes et al. 1986).

The stream channels can also act as traps for blowing snow and sediment during the year. Sediment deposited in a channel may cover the algal mats until the flow is sufficient to transport the aeolian sediment down to the lower reaches of the stream or into the lakes. Most of the aeolian sediment probably accumulates during winter, when the winds are the highest and water flow is absent. This sediment is then flushed during the summer meltwater flow. Only recently have we begun to better quantify particulate matter fluxes from the streams into the lakes (W. Berry Lyons, Kathy Welch, Carmen Nezat, unpublished data).

Spatial changes: climate. The longitudinal and vertical gradients in climate of the dry valleys dictate the gradient of species diversity. The topography of the dry valleys ranges from an average valley floor altitude of approximately 30 m to approximately 2000 m on the mountain peaks in a horizontal distance of only a few kilometers. Taylor Valley sustains an especially large climatic gradient. Meteorological data show that the western end of the valley at Lake Bonney is warmer, drier (even when corrected for the temperature difference), and windier than the eastern end, at Lake Fryxell (Table 1). Although the causes of the climate differences have not been fully elucidated, we hypothesize that there are two interrelated controls. One control is an interaction between the dry katabatic winds that flow off the interior ice sheet and the coastal breezes from the sea ice (Bromley 1985). The katabatic winds warm adiabatically as they descend from the ice sheet, whereas the coastal breezes tend to be cool as they advect into the valley from the ice-covered McMurdo Sound. The interplay and spatial influence of these two wind systems usually result in an up-valley, Lake Fryxell-to-Lake Bonney increase in air temperature and wind speed.



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SEVERAL ANOMOLOUS STRUCTURES POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED IN THE TAYLOR VALLEY / ASGARTH RANGE

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To the average person with no photographic experience or experience in the Taylor Valley itself, it is often difficult to get a handle on the vastness of this wilderness with out some sort of perspective. That said i enlisted my friend and good sport Photographer Shaun O’Boyle to stand in front of the Sollas Glacier at the foot of the Taylor Valley to give you some perspective on how vast an area the dry valleys really are. (Photo Credit: Shaun O’Boyle) 

Although tough to judge in the two dimensions of a photograph, even for me, to accurately gauge distance in Antarctica I used google maps to measure the size of the space between my friend Shaun here and the Quarter-main Mountains rising in the distance in the background. (30.22 Kilometres or 18.77miles)

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 SO, WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT NOW?

THIS IS BULL PASS - A HELICOPTERS VIEW FORM ABOUT 2500 FEET UP OF THE SAME AREA ABOVE ...THE PHOTO ITSELF IS A MASSIVE HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGE AND I ENCOURAGE ALL OF YOU to please download the image here

[ https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taylorglacier_pho_2013_studinger.jpg ]

ok and what is so special about bull pass?

GOOD QUESITON...I am glad you asked

While flying over Antarctica aboard a P-3 aircraft in November 2013, Operation Ice Bridge project scientist Michael Studinger took this photograph (top) of Taylor Valley, one of Antarctica’s unique dry valleys. Home to Taylor Glacier, striking rock outcrops, and Blood Falls, the valley is one of the most remote and geologically exotic places in the world.

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While ice and snow cover most of Antarctica, Taylor Valley and the other dry valleys are conspicuously bare. Inland mountains—the Transantarctic Range—force moisture out of the air as it passes over, leaving the valley in a precipitation shadow. The lack of precipitation leaves dramatic sequences of exposed rock. In both the satellite image and photograph, the tan bands are sandstone layers from the Beacon Supergroup, a series of sedimentary rock layers formed at the bottom of a shallow sea between 250 million and 400 million years ago. Throughout that period, Earth’s southern continents were locked into the supercontinent Gondwana.

The dark band of rock that divides the sandstone is dolerite (sometimes called diabase), a volcanic rock that forms underground. The distinctive dolerite intrusion—or sill—is a remnant of a massive volcanic plumbing system that produced major eruptions about 180 million years ago. The eruptions likely helped tear Gondwana apart.

...The dominant feature in the photograph—Taylor Glacier—is notable as well. Like other glaciers in the Dry Valleys, it is “cold-based,” meaning its bottom is frozen to the ground below. The rest of the world’s glaciers are “wet-based,” meaning they scrape over the bedrock, picking up and leaving obvious piles of debris (moraines) along their edges

Michael Studinger, NASA

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Ya JULIA...that’s a lot of big words I didn’t really understand ...can you make your point a little easier for me to understand?

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Sure …OK...let me put it to you like this;

In this photo THERE IS CLEARLY EVIDENT " A big bunch of rocks and snow" ...BUT HIDDEN WAAAY BACK IS an entire city built around some pyramids

Before you roll your eyes remember this photo was taken from

30 kms away so i can appreciate you can’t see anything but rocks and snow

....do you guys want to see them? 

.... I thought so

....Here check this out

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HERE IS THE ENTIRE SHOT ONE MORE TIME FOR PERSPECUIVE

[ https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taylorglacier_pho_2013_studinger.jpg ]



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OVERHEAD IMAGERY

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 "THE RETRACTABLE ROOF RUINS" 

and yet another DYSON FAN (ARROW, 2nd from right  it looks like a BBQ lid) 



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I am aware that the cut-outs are a tad blurry, and I apologize for that but that’s a clear as I can these images  

that are 20 miles in the distance

.... for a reason I suspect

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and for kicks ...here is the google maps image of the same area

CLOUDS???

how can there be clouds in the direst place on earth and ONLY over the area i just highlighted (with NASA's help...thanx boys!!)

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BIG SURPRISE!!!

and what do we have here? 

Well, 

According to my friends at NASA

an entire city / village reminiscent of Mach Pichu complete with reverse slope embattlements and strange carvings of alien looking beings on the 

exterior mountain slopes

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LOOK CLOSELY AT THAT MOUNTAIN STRAIGHT AHEAD 

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BELOW - THE RUINS AS SEEN FROM THE AIR C/O  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AIR SERVICE (BELOW)

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Below - My fellow researcher and pilot / Friend Gary F.  c/o National Science Foundation

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ABOVE -MT ERABUS PHOGRAPHED AGAINST WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE NIGHT SKY AT 230PM ON A WEDNESDAY!

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The Asgard Range

Deep in the taylor valley in the no go zone stands one of the oddest sites I have ever seen. Balanced a top a 680 foot sheer faced cliff / table rock mountian sites a massive wood beamed constructed "Structure" located in the The Asgard Range - The Asgard Range is a mountain range in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It divides Wright Valley from Taylor Glacier and Taylor Valley, and was named by the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition (VUWAE) (1958–59) after Asgard, the home of the Norse gods. 

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NASA /GOOGLE / GOOGLE EARTH'S CENSORING OF THE ENTIRE TAYLOR VALLEY AEA BORDERS ON THE CRIMAINALL

WHATS THE POINT OF GOOGLE MAPS IF ALL IT DOES IS LIE AND OBFUSCATE??

BELOW- GOOGLE MAPS  OF THE AREA ( NOAH'S ARK CONVENIENTLY CENSORED OUT)

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I cant tell you much about the structure itself - the area is a no fly / no go - zone and the above photo illustrates the closest the NSF crew would allow any one to get. Over flights are not allowed into or over the area which is inaccesable by foot or helicopter so all we can do really is theorize or "guess" what the strucure is and whats purpose was.

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 CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER SEVEN | "THE CAPE EVANS SETTLEMENTS AND RUINS