Faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students from the LSU Department of Geology and Geophysics have been working in and around Antarctica for several years.

Phil Bart, Juan Lorenzo and LSU students have focused on understanding the evolution of the Antarctic cryosphere during the past 25 million years. Ice-cover on Antarctica is contained in three distinct ice sheets (West Antarctic Ice Sheet, East Antarctic Sheet, and Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet) rather than constituting a single glacial system. During the Neogene, the Antarctic Ice Sheets have undergone dramatic modifications that either forced and/or responded to climatic changes. At present, the continent contains sufficient ice volume to raise global sea level by ~70 meters if the ice were melted and returned to the global ocean. Phil is currently funded by the NSF Office of Polar Programs to collect marine seismic data on the eastern Ross Sea, western Ross Sea and the pacific-margin of the Antarctic Peninsula. These studies are very important as we seek to predict how the ice sheets will behave in the future. One major result obtained thus far is that all three systems experienced major expansions into the marine realm during the early Pliocene when global climates were warmer than present. This supports some numerical models that predict that future global warming could have the unexpected effect of causing the ice sheets to expand. This project includes several LSU undergraduate students actively involved in Antarctic research.

Huiming Bao has worked in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica to examine atmospheric deposition and post-depositional processes in hyperarid settings.

John Wrenn and his students have worked on dinoflagellate cyst biostratigraphy, evolution, and paleoecology of the Antarctic, with an emphasis on their interaction with Cenozoic tectonic, paleoceanographic, and climate changes. Recent core studies in the Ross Sea have recovered the first dinocysts from Antarctic Neogene. These will provide a basis for a new biostratigraphic zonation.

Sophie Warny and John Wrenn are currently funded from the NSF OPP to conduct palynological work in North basin, Ross Sea and on DVDP sediment cores 10 and 11 at the mouth of the dry valleys.