FW: Film about MSU-led research in Antarctica reaches international audiences

BOZEMAN — A film released in October that features the work of MSU researchers in Antarctica has been selected to be screened at regional, national and international events.

The film, “The Lake at the Bottom of the World,” follows an international team of scientists on a project called Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access, or SALSA. It was screened in February at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference, a nationally recognized scientific organization, and is screening this week at the Academia Film Olomouc, the oldest international festival of science films in the Czech Republic. 

The feature-length documentary’s distinctiveness is the subject matter and how the filmmakers, MSU alums Kathy Kasic and Billy Collins, were a part of the research process from the beginning, said Mark Skidmore, one of the primary investigators on SALSA and MSU professor in the Department of Earth Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. 

“There haven’t been many large research projects in Antarctica, where the filmmakers have been embedded as a part of the science team from the beginning of the project,” Skidmore said 

With a field camp of 50 scientists, drillers and support personnel, SALSA explored one of the largest subglacial lakes in west Antarctica — buried 3,600 feet beneath the ice — to uncover more about this newly discovered biome.   

John Priscu, a Montana University System Emeritus Regents Professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences in MSU’s College of Agriculture, led the project with MSU principal investigators John Dore, also from the LRES department, Skidmore, and Earth sciences graduate student Tim Campbell. 

“We investigated Subglacial Lake Mercer, collecting water and sediment, to understand cycling of carbon and nutrients through the lake system to the ocean and how these subglacial lakes work as a part of the hydrologic system beneath West Antarctica,” Skidmore said. 

SALSA researchers have published initial findings on the supply of the nutrient, iron from the subglacial environment to the Southern Ocean, and the drilling and sampling operation. The 62-square-mile lake was discovered with satellite imagery more than a decade ago. It’s located about 370 miles from the South Pole.  

To find out more about SALSA and the film, visit salsa-antarctica.org. 

 -ed-

This story is available on the Web at: http://www.montana.edu/news/22071