TY - JOUR T1 - The impact of fossil fuel burning related to scientific activities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica: Revisited JF - Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene Y1 - 2018 A1 - W. Berry Lyons A1 - Saelens, Elsa D. A1 - Kathleen A. Welch KW - carbon dynamics KW - emissions KW - fossil fuels KW - helicopter KW - management KW - McMurdo Dry Valleys KW - nitrogen KW - science activites AB -

 

Fossil fuel use associated with scienti c activities in the Taylor Valley, Antarctic has been examined to determine the fluxes of particulate organic and elemental carbon and nitrogen as well as NOx for the 2015–2016 austral summer field season. These carbon and nitrogen fluxes are compared to our previously published calculations for the 1997–1998 austral summer. In addition, we compile fossil fuel usage and resulting C and N fluxes from the major field camp in Taylor Valley, Lake Hoare Camp (LHC) from the late 1990’s through 2017. In general, the annual fluxes do vary from year to year, but there is no significant trend, at least during the primary summer field season. There is indication that increasing the length of scientific operations does increase the C and N inputs via fossil fuel burning. This works supports our original results demonstrating that over long periods of time the anthropogenic flux of N from local fossil fuel burning could become quantitatively important in the region. Although the particulate C fluxes remain very low, the recent finding of black carbon in the Taylor Valley landscape indicates more on-going monitoring of the source of this material is merited.

 

VL - 6 UR - https://www.elementascience.org/article/10.1525/elementa.288/ JO - Elem Sci Anth ER -