The Dominion Range Ice Core

Localized-accumulation basins in the Transantarctic Mountains contain sites yielding ice-cores that provide highly detailed (seasonal to annual resolution, depending upon depth),several-thousand-year records of glacial history, climatic change, volcanic activity, and atmospheric chemistry. The scientific attraction of these sites, first, their geographic location with respect to other ice-core studies (which are most commonly recovered from inland sectors of the antarctic ice sheet)and second, the fact that Transantarctic Mountain sites are more directly comparable to glacial geologic records because the latter are usually based on studies in these mountains. Although the ice-core records from these sites cover shorter periods than glacial geologic records, they provide much finer resolution and hence allow more elaborate and direct comparisons to be made with modern Antarctica. Details gained from ice-core records in the Transantarctic Mountains, therefore, provide us with a better understanding of glacial geologic records. The most valuable ice-core records are those which are highly detailed and involve a number of different types of physical and chemical measurements because such records maximize the dating of the core while also providing the tightest resolution and interpretation