Get Regular Updates!
Search
|Private funds to support antarctic research

Earth

image|

Professor Emma Johnston

Private funds to support antarctic research

Private funds to support antarctic research

A new environmental charity has been launched to support the work of the Australian Antarctic Program.

Private funds to support antarctic research

For marine ecologist Professor Emma Johnston, the “brilliant sparkle” of Antarctica has left a lasting impression.

She remembers, with intricate detail, a young snow petrel chick, fields of fanworms under sea ice, wild storms above and the summer sun never setting, the sky filled with pinks, purples and apricots.

“It is screen-saved on my mind,” she says.

View Larger
The Antarctic evening sky, filled with pinks, purples and apricots, is burned into Emma’s mind

The Antarctic Science Foundation is banking on private sector donations to bolster Australian research interests in the Antarctic.

It follows in the footsteps of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which in April was the recipient of a partnership with the Federal Government worth more than $440 million.

Emma says the Foundation launched in June with one mission—to support science, education and conservation of the isolated island of Antarctica.

“Our scientists have long been the explorers of this icy unknown,” she says.

The Antarctic Science Foundation is a newly launched environmental charity to support research, education and conservation of the isolated island of Antarctica.
Professor Emma Johnston
“But Antarctica’s extreme isolation and bitter cold have made research difficult. Even today, with all our new technologies, the icy continent and its surrounding ocean have retained many mysteries.”

So which mysteries is the Foundation hoping to start with?

WINTER IS COMING

Emma says the vast majority of science is done in summer, when transport to and from Antarctica is possible.

She says the Antarctic Science Foundation will help scientists “shed light on the dark”.

“Scientists are rarely stationed on any Australian base during winter,” Emma says.

“We will raise funds to enable scientists to do research in Antarctic during the dark days.”

TWEETING A GLACIER

Emma says the Foundation will raise money to place remote sensors on the Totten Glacier, the largest glacier in East Antarctica.

View Larger
The Foundation plans to put sensors on a glacier. The data could then be broadcast via social media.

The glacier is twice the area of Victoria, and 70 billion tonnes of ice flow out of it each year.

If it melted, it contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 3 metres.

Emma says the sensors on the Totten glacier could communicate data on temperature and movement in real time, proving an unprecedented insight into how the glacier is changing.

She says the data could then be broadcast on social media.

“Linking this remote sensing capability to social media—“tweeting the Totten”, if you will—would give members of the public a very direct connection to the dynamic Antarctic environment,” Emma says.

Antarctica has many secrets to uncover. From the impact of climate change on glacial movements…
. Credit: Professor Emma Johnston
View Larger
Image |

Professor Emma Johnston

Antarctica has many secrets to uncover. From the impact of climate change on glacial movements…
…To the behaviour of native wildlife.
. Credit: Professor Emma Johnston
View Larger
Image |

Professor Emma Johnston

…To the behaviour of native wildlife.

WHERE ARE THE WHALES?

Another target is whale research.

“Whale research starts with finding whales, but effectively locating them when they are spending time in the enormous Southern Ocean is surprisingly challenging,” Emma says.

“I’ve spent hours on the bridge of a ship, pounding through 5 metre Southern Ocean swells, scanning the complex horizon for a hint of a whale blow.”

View Larger
Emma has spent hours on a ship, pounding through 5 metre swells, scanning for a hint of a whale blow

Emma says recently developed technologies for long-distance detection are game-changers for whale research.

She wants the Foundation to raise funds for new infrared and sonar technologies on research ships in the Southern Ocean.

Emma says the Foundation will support science projects that reach out and cut through, giving a voice to the Antarctic.

“We’ve got work to do,” she says.

Particle Puns

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy

We've got chemistry. Want something physical?