Antarctica during the pandemic: scaled-back field season prioritizes infrastructure, precious climate data

Mayer, A.

Oscar Schofield, a Rutgers University professor who is also a coprincipal investigator (PI) for the Palmer Antarctica Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, was on a research cruise off the West Antarctic peninsula in February 2020 when he first saw news of the increasingly rapid spread of the novel coronavirus. Field research in Antarctica always requires months of planning. Everyone has to go through a rigorous medical evaluation and researchers have to package up their equipment and ship it to designated ports for transport arranged by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The logistics are so complicated that Schofield says he is typically home from the field no more than 3 weeks before it is time to start planning the next season. But in March 2020, with the virus raging, Antarctic researchers knew they were in for more uncertainty and surprises than usual. Program officers at the NSF, which funds most US Antarctic research, were working with international partners to assess fieldwork prospects on the continent during the pandemic. Eventually, they created a three tiered system, says Karla Heidelberg, program director for the NSF's Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program in the Office of Polar Programs. While recognizing that sending no one would jeopardize the infrastructure at the various stations, she says that the NSF determined early on that the 2020 to 2021 summer season would be greatly scaled back. The LTER sites and other American research projects in Antarctica look at everything from penguins and seals to phytoplankton and nematodes to atmospheric conditions and glaciers. Polar regions are responding faster than other latitudes to global warming, so they are a focus of climate change research across many disciplines. Instead of close to 10 researchers, this year, just three students tagged seals and collected biometric data that will be used to estimate breeding and survival rates. The McMurdo LTER project did not get to send a single researcher. Despite the frustration and the uncertainty, researchers report that the overall scientific integrity of most studies remains intact, and the impacts are not devastating. Funding agencies and scientists expect they will again have delays and last-minute decisions for the 2021 to 2022 Antarctic summer field season. But Cannone sees one benefit the pandemic brought to Antarctic science.