BIOLOGY Soil Microbial and Ecological Studies in

• Main Author: Southern Victoria Land
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Austral; Antarc*; permafrost
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.651.4039; http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3440/1/3440.pdf

has conducted a desert-microflora program involving investigations on several continents of desert environ ments, soils, and microorganisms relevant to the detection and quarantine of life on Mars. The ob jectives are to study and identify basic groups of microorganisms of extreme environments, especially those of desert soils, and to correlate the environ-mental parameters with the distribution, abundance, and kinds of microorganisms and their activities. Antarctic dry valleys have been studied during the austral summers of 1966-1967 (Cameron, 1967) and 1967-1968. Five field sites were established for ap proximately one-week periods, some in cooperation w i t h the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) (Benoit and Cameron, 1967). Soil samples were col lected aseptically from the surface to a level a few inches below the upper surface of permafrost at selected sites throughout the valleys. Measurements o r observations were made either continuously or every three hours of soil temperature, solar-radiation flux, net thermal exchange, ultraviolet-radiation flux, l i ght intensity, wind direction and velocity, baro metric pressure, evaporation rate, relative humidity, dew point, and gas concentration. Dur ing the past season, 58 surface and subsurface soil samples were collected. Twelve of them were obtained with Dr. James Turnock of NASA, Wash ington, D.C., for testing at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. Microbiological analyses of 45 samples f r o m 22 sites were made at the McMurdo biological laboratory. More than 1,000 pounds of frozen sam ples were sent to JPL's Soil Science Laboratory for further processing and analysis. Sandy, saline soils * This paper presents the results of one phase of research