Poreda conducts research in Antarctica

Poreda, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is joining about a dozen other people in one of the world's most remote places as part of a Long-Term Ecological Research project sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The pristine conditions of the Antarctic--and the fragile nature of life there--offer scientists an unparalleled glimpse at the history of Earth's climate and an environment so sensitive that slight changes in today's climate often show up quickly.

Poreda is studying the chemistry of a series of lakes thousands of years old, some of the oldest lakes on the planet, in a desert area known as the McMurdo Dry Valleys, part of the largest ice-free area on the continent. It's a place where life is dominated by microbes and mosses and where the highest form of life is a worm. His efforts will help scientists understand natural climate cycles and human influences on climate.

"This is just about the best place in the world to study the human impact on our ecosystem," said Poreda. "Right now no one is really sure what's happening with the climate, whether the slight upswing in temperature over the last few thousand years is just a normal fluctuation or whether temperatures will keep rising. These are the kinds of questions we're trying to answer. A long-term increase could raise sea levels globally, possibly flooding out millions of people and causing years of extremely cold winters at high latitudes such as Europe."

Once back in his University laboratory, Poreda will use a rare-gas spectrometer to analyze the water samples, trying to learn what lives within the lakes, how fast water flows into and out of them, and how biologically active they are.

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