Four Polish scientists reached the AB Dobrowolski Polish Antarctic Station at Bunger’s Oasis in Antarctica. Poles will stay there for six weeks. The base has not been used for over 40 years. Now it is to become a new center of research activity.
Scientists from the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) began their expedition on November 10 last year in Bremerhaven, Germany. In early December, they reached Cape Town in South Africa, from where the expedition set off to Antarctica aboard the Russian icebreaker “Akademik Fedorow”.
A Russian helicopter took a Polish team from the deck of the icebreaker, in the vicinity of the Shackleton glacier shelf. The landing at the Oasis of Bunger, where the buildings of the Polish station are located, took place on January 8 at 10:10 Polish time.
The participants of the 4th Geophysical Expedition of the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences are three researchers of the Institute – Prof. Monika A. Kusiak (geologist, isotope geochemist and project manager of PAAN – Poles Together), Prof. Marek Lewandowski (geophysicist, geologist, palaeomagnetist and leader of the expedition), Dr Adam Nawrot (geographer, geomorphologist). Prof. Wojciech Miloch – physicist and ionospheric physicist from the University of Oslo also participates in the expedition.
The scientists will spend a month and a half at the station. During this time, they will arrange the interiors of two wooden buildings located there, install and test research equipment that will automatically perform seismic and magnetic measurements. Furthermore, the team will also collect material for geological, geochemical and geomorphological research, as well as for ionospheric physics.
The Antoni B. Dobrowolski station is the oldest Polish Antarctic institution. The buildings at Bunger’s Oasis on the Knox Coast on Wilkes Land in East Antarctica were built in 1957 by the Soviet Union. The station was donated to Poland along with the equipment as an Oazis station in December 1958.
The technical takeover of the Station by the Polish Academy of Sciences took place in January 1959. On the acquisition date, it was renamed to the Antoni B. Dobrowolski station, and in 1991 it was granted to the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Due to the climatic, geomorphological and geological specificity, the Oasis is often treated as the equivalent of the surface of Mars.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński