ND geomorphologist Jaakko Putkonen, student team in Antarctica

Completing work they began last November, University of North Dakota geomorphologist Dr. Jaakko Putkonen and a student team soon head again to one of Antarctica\u27s remotest ice free valleys. The expedition is funded by the National Science Foundation. They leave Wednesday and will be in Antarctica for about two months. Putkonen, a well-established expert in polar and high-mountain landscapes, will be accompanied on this trip by a hand-picked team of UND students: Ted Bibby, a PhD candidate in geology and an experienced cold-climate trekker; Collin Giusti, a UND undergrad who\u27s going on his second Antarctic mission; and first-timer Erin Hoeft, a UND geology undergrad from Two Harbors, Minn., who jumped at this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join the expedition. Our mission this time is to collect more data and more samples and to go to places where we couldn\u27t get the last time we were there (in December 2010-January 2011), Putkonen, who\u27s conducted research in several of the world\u27s remotest, coldest locations, including Antarctica and Greenland. The research aims to describe changes in the Antarctic landscape over time; some of that may reflect natural climate change while other indicators may help scientists understand more about human-generated climate change. Interesting twist We\u27ll have to use a tortuous, cumbersome route to the field site, Putkonen said. Since we don\u27t have helicopters there this year, we will have to go there in a small airplane and land on the ice sheet, and hike quite a bit farther to our various sites; it\u27s real strenuous work. It\u27s a physically punishing trip because you\u27re working 2500 meters above sea level in a truly rough landscape, said Putkonen, whose previous research missions include time in the high Arctic and in the Himalayas. We all have to prepare physically for several months for this expedition, using stationary bikes and weights at the UND Wellness Center, said Putkonen, who has stayed fit for all of his professional career so that he can accomplish his rigorous field research. I test the people I choose to join the team before accepting them—they have to at least be able to keep up with me. I tell students, \u27if you are in good shape, things are much more fun, if you\u27re in bad shape, you don\u27t get things done.\u27 I don\u27t ask anyone to do anything that I don\u27t or can\u27t do myself. We share all the work. Covering tracks We also have to recover all the data-gathering instruments we set in place last year—we cannot leave any traces of anything there, Putkonen said. Everything we bring in—including all of our garbage and human waste—we have to take back out when the research mission is completed. During last year\u27s expedition, Putkonen and his team set up several data loggers and sensors that were left there to gather information over the year; those will be recovered during the coming two-month expedition. Putkonen hopes to find all his data gathering equipment intact. But there\u27s no guarantee of that, Putkonen said. Everything we left there had to go through the brutal Antarctic winter. So we\u27ll see if they all survived. We overbuilt everything, including setting all the sensors and data loggers up on plumbing-grade zinc pipe anchored with boulders—you might say it\u27s \u27bomb proof\u27, but we don\u27t really know what to expect until we get there. The group will again be digging in the dirt, a three-foot layer of rough, rocky soil that sits atop an even deeper continent-scale layer of ice. This is the last field phase of the project, which runs another year or so while Putkonen and his students analyze the data they\u27ve collected. Some scientists only need to walk across the street to the Core & Sample Library to collect data, we have to go to Antarctica to collect ours, Putkonen quipped