>Hi Lee & SWR list,
>
>You may be interested to hear I will be using flying robots to explore
>the ice caves on Mt Erebus this December as part of my PhD project at
>New Mexico Tech. I am currently testing an xAircraft X650 frame with the
>open-source ArduPilotMega 2 flight controller. I hope to purchase a
>Hokyo lidar which I will either mount on the xAircraft frame, or if I
>can find sufficient funding ($12,500) I would like to purchase the
>Ascending Technologies SLAM Pelican system. My current research is on
>Erebus but I would of course use this system in traditional karst as
>well. I've done plenty of traditional cave surveying, and some cave
>lidar surveying, and think that quadcopter-mounted lidar systems are a
>great solution, and the technology is here already. I have an old blog
>post here: http://www.diydrones.com/xn/detail/705844:BlogPost:839613
>
>Feel free to get in touch with me if you are interested, or have
>suggestions for further funding sources.
>
>Cheers,
>Aaron
A question for you as an Antarctic speleological researcher: Larry
Fish brought my attention in May to bizarre features visible in Google
Earth--two huge holes in rough-looking black terrain with patchy snow and
ice near the coast of East Antarctica. The larger one (about 300 feet
across!) is at 66d 33' 11.77" S, 99d 50' 21.33" E; the smaller one (about
100 feet across) is at 66d 36' 12.57" S, 99d 43' 12.36" E. The latter one
looks to have some dark-colored, curving hood-like structure, with a
raised margin, arching over half of the opening (or at least gives that
illusion when viewed without stereo capability). The other may have a
shell of ice along the right side, with a gap between that and the rock.
My first thought was volcanic fumaroles, with emerging fumes interacting
with subzero surface air to form cryokarstic equivalents of rimmed vents,
like the ice towers made by this process on Mt. Erebus.
But this area with the apparent pits is in Queen Mary Land, near the
Bunger Hills, a quarter of the way around the continent's margin from the
Mt. Erebus volcanic zone, in terrain mapped as very ancient Precambrian
with some younger overlying sediments. This would seem to preclude
volcanic venting. There's been some science done in the Bunger Hills, but
I've no idea whether anyone has ever looked at these pits up close.
Whatever these holes are, they are shown as at only about 500 feet
elevation, so they presumably can't go deeper than that without going
below sea level. My only other guess is that the chaotic-looking black
landscape is not bedrock but stony glacial drift, and that the pits might
conceivably be where massive chunks of ice have disappeared from
underneath a permafrost-stabilized rubble surface. But, with the sole
exception of the round pits in volcanic rock on Mars, these are the most
alien-looking cave mouths I've ever seen, and could be right out of H. P.
Lovecraft. I wondered whether you might have any insights about these
remarkable features, or know any experts on Antarctic geomorphology who
could at least tell us what the black host material actually is, and what
processes in that environment could account for such cavities.
--Donald Davis
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