Palmer LTER Site Flash (Feb92) - Karen Baker, PAL datamanager

1)The Palmer Antarctic LTER (PAL) highlights: 
  OCT91: First field season began
  NOV91: First annual time-series large-scale cruise 
  DEC91: Weekly small-scale sampling begun
  JAN92: 1st automatic weather station installed

2) First field season is in progress (began 11October91 and ends in March92)
and going well with sampling including hydrography, optics, nutrients, 
krill, antarctic silverfish, skua, and penguin field work.
There were 10-12 people on site except during the November cruise when the
team increased by 6.  The ship cruise was held in November as planned although
large amounts of ice impacted the large-scale grid sampling.
The routine zodiac sampling on the fine-scale grid began in December when ice
cleared out of the harbor and continues on a weekly or twice weekly schedule.

3) Two GPS units (one LTER; one Dept. Geography,UCSB) were used during the
first field season to establish exact locations of large and fine sampling
grid site locations.

4) A Polar Automatic Weather Station was installed 5Jan92 near Bonaparte Point, 
approximately 1/4 mile from Palmer Station. This is the first of
four planned weather stations in the vicinity.  Data is collected by the
satellites and downloaded to the Palmer site satellite receiving system and
later to the weathernetwork at Univ of Wisc.

5) Palmer station weather watch data has been put into an accessible on-line 
form.  Ice observations have been added to the weather record.  
Discussions continue with respect to upgrades to the Palmer station weather
record including the possiblity of automatic recording of fine scale wind 
and temperature.