>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 _______________________________________________ SWR mailing list s...@caver.net http://lists.caver.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swr _______________________________________________ This list is provided free as a courtesy of CAVERNET