Palmer LTER Site Flash (Sep94) - Karen Baker, PAL datamanager

The third field season from September93 to March94 was completed with
continuation of oceanographic, krill and bird surveys.  In addition 
to the weekly sampling program at Palmer Station, there were two major ship
cruises during which core measurements were made off the Antarctic
Peninsula. 1)An lteraug93 austral spring cruise on the established LTER
grid was followed by a similar fall cruise, ltermar93, to investigate responses 
of the ecosystem to winter ice conditions.  These paired cruises, conducted 
once within each six year funding period, aim to determine the effect on the
ecosystem of winters of very different annual sea ice conditions.  2)The
lterjan94 cruise was the second annual cruise of the PAL LTER and resampled
stations on several established transects.

Data forms were provided for at sea use on mac, pc, unix disks during 
these two cruises.  As a result, much documentation of data sets
was accomplished in real-time.  Consideration of possible procedure 
manuals is underway as techniques become standardized. Use of two unix
workstations at sea was successful and productive but will continue
on a limited basis due to difficulty and expense of maintaining 
trained personnel in the field.

Preparations are underway for the fourth field season and the lterjan95 
annual cruise.  Plans have begun for the installation of a second
automatic weather station (AWS) at Hugo Island in addition to the
first one on Bonaparte Point.  Inquiries continue in an effort to
collect historical weather data.

Conversion was made from the online documentation browse program to a 
gopher site implementation.  A Mosaic home page was installed and 
various formats tested.  Mosaic has provided a useful method
for sharing graphical information between principal investigators.
A new 2.0 gigabyte disk replaced older hardware for data storage.
Throughout the last year plans have been made for interfacing with 
the ship and station computer upgrades and the new ship data 
acquisition system (DAS).

An LTER Executive Committee Meeting and a Steering Committee Meeting
in December93 preceded the Palmer LTER site review.  The site review
was held in two locations: 5-7Feb in Santa Barbara where the emphasis
was on data management and 8-17Feb at Palmer Station in the Antarctic.