This award is for support for a program to investigate the visual stratigraphy, index physical properties, relaxation characteristics and crystalline structure of ice cores from Siple Dome, West Antarctica. This investigation will include measurements of a time-priority nature that must be initiated at the drill site on freshly-drilled cores. This will be especially true of cores from the brittle ice zone, which is expected to comprise a significant fraction of the ice core. The brittle zone includes ice in which relaxation , resulting from the release of confining pressure is maximized and leads to significant changes in the mechanical condition of the core that must be considered in relation to the processing and analysis of ice samples for entrapped gas and chemical studies. This relaxation will be monitored via precision density measurements made initially at the drill site and repeated at intervals back in the U.S. Other studies will include measurement of the annual layering in the core to as great a depth as visual stratigraphy can be deciphered, crystal size measurements as a function of depth and age, c-axis fabric studies, and analysis of the physical properties of any debris-bearing basal ice and its relationship to the underlying bedrock. Only through careful documentation and analysis of these key properties can we hope to accurately assess the dynamic state of the ice and the age-depth relationships essential to deciphering the paleoclimate record at this location.
