PSU Magazine Spring 2002

Extreme Environments Center receives grant The study of life or the remnant of life in thermal vents on the floor of the Indian Ocean, hot prings at Ye llowstone National Park, and the frigid depths of a lake in Kamchatka, Russ ia, have brought the PSU Center fo r Life in Extreme Environments a new $750,000 grant. Their work described in PSU Maga– zine two years ago, scientists Dav id Boone, Sherry Cady, and Anna-Louise Reysenbach con tinue to study micro– bial life, or the traces of it, in nature's most inhospitable place , to provide clue to the beginnings of life. The grant comes from the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, one of the nation's largest private philan– throp ic organizations, established by Superior O il Company fo under William Myron Keck. The foundation award "exemplary institu tions where outstanding people are doing bo ld and important work." Men's golf discontinued Facing budget reductions, Athletics Director Tom Burman announced in March the elimination of the Portland State men's golf program. Burman's decision will be effective at the conclusion of the spring season. The decision to drop the program was based upon budget reductions for the A thletics Department that are expected to reach $225,000 next year. While the decision to eliminate a sport was challenging, the Big Sky Conference does not recognize men's golf as a core sport, says Burman . With only five schools participating in men 's golf, the conference does not receive automatic qualification into the NCAA Championships. In five previous season , PSU placed fourth ('97) , sixth ('98), first ('99 ), fifth ('00) and second ('01) among Big Sky schools. This spring PSU is scheduled to compete in at least fi ve tournaments, including the Big Sky Championship, April 23-25. With the elimination of men' go lf, Portland State will have 16 interco lle– giate athletic program . Ice shelf collapse proves prof's theory An ice shelf the size of Rhode Island rising steadily in the Antarctic since shattered in just five weeks this year the late 1940. The importance of on the ea tern side of the Antarctic melt ponds, as assessed by Hulbe, Peninsula. Remarkable not only in Scambos, and Fahnestock, indicates size, the shelf was ancient, an that mean summer temperature is a estimated 12,000 years old. better guide. How could such a massive piece Through Hulbe's sophisticated of ice splinter apart so quickly? PSU computer simulation of the motions Geology Prof. Christina Hulbe and and forces within an ice shelf, and a team of scientist answered that Scambos's and Fahnestaock's que tion for the world. analysis of two decades of satellite The Larsen Ice Shelf has been images, the scientists demonstrated under close ob ervation since 1995, that added pressure from surface when its north- PHOTO COURTESY OF TED scAMsos AND NASA water filling ernmo t sector (Larsen A) col– lapsed in a simi– larly dramatic event. crevasses can crack the ice entirely though. The team' study is the first to connect the basic physics of the proce s. "At the time, we didn't have a good explana– tion of why an ice shelf hould break apart into so many mall pieces. Usua lly, icebergs calve (break off) only from the sea– ward front of an ice shelf," says Hulbe, who The turquoise area in this satellite image of the Larsen Ice Shelf is where 5,230 square miles of ice turned into slushy ice fragments. Days before the final breakup of Larsen B, their theory wa confirmed. Satellite imag– ing showed large melt ponds con– worked with Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colorado, and Mark Fahnestock at University of Maryland, College Park. "We eventually concluded that surface melt water, generated during long summer , was filling normally air-filled cracks in the ice surface, creating the potential for rapid disintegration of the ice shelf." The recent collapse of the section known as Larsen B came at the end of the one of the wannest summers on record in the Antarctic Penin– sula. Past assessments of ice shelf sta– bility were ba ed primarily on mean annual temperature, which has been tracting, indicating that the surface water was draining through to the sea. An open but slushy bay, is all that remains in the region once covered by a millennia-old ice shelf. The research team's next objective is to improve temperature trend observations for the icy conti– nent and determine if such massive breakup events could take place on the larger, colder ice shelves farther south. A new grant to PSU from the National Science Foundation and an ongoing grant from NASA, supporting Hulbe's development of computer model to study ice fracture processes, will be part of that effort. SPRI G 2002 PSU MAGAZINE 3