USAP-DC

Non-technical description: East Antarctica holds a vast, ancient ice sheet. The bedrock hidden beneath this ice sheet may provide clues to how today's continents formed, while the ice itself contains records of Earth's atmosphere from distant eras. New drilling technologies are now available to allow for direct sampling of these materials from more than two kilometers below the ice surface. However, getting this material will require knowing where to look. The Southern Plateau Ice-sheet Characterization and Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate (SPICECAP) project will use internationally collected airborne survey data to search East Antarctica near the South Pole for key locations that will provide insight into Antarctica's geology and for locating the oldest intact ice on Earth. Ultimately, scientists are interested in obtaining samples of the oldest ice to address fundamental questions about the causes of changes in the timing of ice-age conditions from 40,000 to 100,000 year cycles. SPICECAP data analysis will provide site survey data for future drilling and will increase the overall understanding of Antarctica's hidden ice and geologic records. The project involves international collaboration and leveraging of internationally collected data. The SPICECAP project will train new interdisciplinary scientists at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels. Technical description: This study focuses on processing and interpretation of internationally collected aerogeophysical data from the Southern Plateau of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The data include ice penetrating radar data, laser altimetry, gravity and magnetics.  The project will provide information on geological trends under the ice, the topography and character of the ice/rock interface, and the stratigraphy of the ice. The project will also provide baseline site characterization for future drilling. Future drilling sites and deep ice cores for old ice require that the base of the ice sheet be frozen to the bed (i.e. no free water at the interface between rock and ice) and the assessment will map the extent of frozen vs. thawed areas. Specifically, three main outcomes are anticipated for this project. First, the study will provide an assessment of the viability of Titan Dome, a subglacial highland region located near South Pole, as a potential old ice drilling prospect. The assessment will include determining the hydraulic context of the bed by processing and interpreting the radar data, ice sheet mass balance through time by mapping englacial reflectors in the ice and connecting them to ice stratigraphy in the recent South Pole, and ice sheet geometry using laser altimetry. Second, the study will provide an assessment of the geological context of the Titan Dome region with respect to understanding regional geologic boundaries and the potential for bedrock sampling. For these two goals, we will use data opportunistically collected by China, and the recent PolarGAP dataset. Third, the study will provide an assessment of the risk posture for RAID site targeting in the Titan Dome region, and the Dome C region. This will use a high-resolution dataset the team collected previously at Dome C, an area similar to the coarser resolution data collected at Titan Dome, and will enable an understanding of what is missed by the wide lines spacing at Titan Dome. Specifically, we will model subglacial hydrology with and without the high resolution data, and statistically examine the detection of subglacial mountains (which could preserve old ice) and subglacial lakes (which could destroy old ice), as a function of line spacing.

Person	Role
Young, Duncan A.	Investigator and contact
Blankenship, Donald D.	Co-Investigator
Beem, Lucas H.	Researcher
Greenbaum, Jamin	Researcher
Roberts, Jason	Co-Investigator
Bo, Sun	Co-Investigator

Antarctic Earth Sciences

Award # 1443690

USAP-1443690_1

Deployment	Type
CHA1 (2015/2016 ICECAP2)	airborne survey
CHA2 (2016/2017 ICECAP2)	airborne survey
ICP7 (2015/2016 ICECAPII)	airborne survey

None in the Database

Repository	Title (link)	Format(s)	Status
AADC	ICECAP radargrams in support of the international old ice search at Dome C - 2016	netCDF	exists
AADC	SPICECAP/ICECAP II Instrument Measurements (LASER, MAGNETICS and POSITIONING)	ASCII	exists
USAP-DC	ICECAP: High resolution survey of the Little Dome C region in support of the IPICS Old Ice goal	ASCII	exists
USAP-DC	ICECAP Basal Interface Specularity Content Profiles: IPY and OIB	PDF	exists
USAP-DC	Ice-penetrating radar internal stratigraphy over Dome C and the wider East Antarctic Plateau	ASCII	exists
USAP-DC	Titan Dome, East Antarctica, Aerogeophysical Survey	ASCII	exists
USAP-DC	Airborne potential fields data from Titan Dome, Antarctica	ASCII	exists
USAP-DC	ICECAP: Gridded boundary conditions for Little Dome C, Antarctica, and extracted subglacial lake locations	ASCII	exists

1. Young, D. A., Roberts, J. L., Ritz, C., Frezzotti, M., Quartini, E., Cavitte, M. G. P., Tozer, C. R., Steinhage, D., Urbini, S., Corr, H. F. J., Van Ommen, T., and Blankenship, D. D.,2017, High resolution boundary conditions of an old ice target near Dome C, Antarctica, The Cryosphere, 11, 1--15 (doi:10.5194/tc-11-1897-2017)
2. Beem, L. H., Cavitte, M. G. P., Blankenship, D. D., Carter, S. P., Young, D. A., Muldoon, G. R., Jackson, C. S., and Siegert, M. J.,2017, Ice-flow reorganization within the East Antarctic Ice Sheet deep interior, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 461, (doi:10.1144/SP461.14)
3. Passalacqua, O., Cavitte, M. G. P., Gagliardini, O., Gillet-Chaulet, F., Parrenin, F., Ritz, C., and Young, D. A.,2018, Brief communication: "Oldest Ice" patches diagnosed 37 km southwest of Dome C, East Antarctica, The Cryosphere, 12, 2167-2174 (doi:10.5194/tc-12-2167-2018)
4. Liefferinge, B. V., Pattyn, F., Cavitte, M. G. P., Karlsson, N. B., Young, D. A., Sutter, J., and and Olaf Eisen,2018, Promising Oldest Ice sites in East Antarctica based on thermodynamical modelling, The Cryosphere, 12, 2773-2787 (doi:10.5194/tc-2017-276)
5. Cavitte, M. G. P., Parrenin, F., Ritz, C., Young, D. A., Blankenship, D. D., Frezzotti, M., and Roberts, J. L.,2018, Stable accumulation patterns around Dome C, East Antarctica, over the last glacial cycle, The Cryosphere, 12, 1401--1414 (doi:10.5194/tc-12-1401-2018)
6. Muldoon, G. R., Jackson, C. S., Young, D. A., and Blankenship, D. D.,2018, Bayesian estimation of englacial radar chronology in Central West Antarctica, Dynamics And Statistics Of The Climate System, 3, 1, dzy004 (doi:10.1093/climatesystem/dzy004)
7. Beem, L. H., Young, D. A., Greenbaum, J. S., Blankenship, D. D., Cavitte, M. G. P., Guo, J., & Bo, S. (2021). Aerogeophysical characterization of Titan Dome, East Antarctica, and potential as an ice core target. The Cryosphere, 15(4), 1719–1730. (doi:10.5194/tc-15-1719-2021)
8. Cavitte, M. G. P., Young, D. A., Mulvaney, R., Ritz, C., Greenbaum, J. S., Ng, G., Kempf, S. D., Quartini, E., Muldoon, G. R., Paden, J., Frezzotti, M., Roberts, J. L., Tozer, C. R., Schroeder, D. M., and Blankenship, D. D.,in review, A detailed radiostratigraphic data set for the central East Antarctic Plateau spanning the last half million years, Earth System Science Data Discussions, 2020, 1--27 (doi:10.5194/essd-2020-393)
9. Beem, L. H., Young, D. A., Greenbaum, J. S., Blankenship, D. D., Guo, J., & Bo, S. (2020). Characterization of Titan Dome, East Antarctica, and potential as an ice core target. The Cryosphere Discuss. [preprint] (doi:10.5194/tc-2020-210)
10. Liu-Schiaffini, M., Ng, G., Grima, C., & Young, D. (2022). Ice Thickness from Deep Learning and Conditional Random Fields: Application to Ice Penetrating Radar Data with Radiometric Validation. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 1–1. (doi:10.1109/tgrs.2022.3214147)