Indicators of Environmental Change in the Antarctic was heldon 24 and 25 February 1986.

The publication in March of 1986 of the proceedings volume,Antarctic Treaty System: An Assessment, of the Board-hostedBeardmore Glacier Camp, Antarctica, Workshop on the Ant-arctic Treaty System, provides a useful reference about antarcticscience and politics for the worldwide media and for the scien-tific, technical, and political communities.

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) activities. ThePolar Research Board, in its role as U.S. National Committee forSCAR, organized and hosted the XIX Meeting of SCAR in SanDiego, California, 9-27 June 1986. The meeting was attended bymore than 200 members of the international antarctic scientificcommunity. Individual meetings held in San Diego included:workshops on crustal structure, Cenozoic geology, and geo-magnetic conjugate studies; SCAR working groups on biology,geology, solid-earth geophysics, logistics, and upper at-mosphere physics; subcommittees on conservation and birdbiology, and the group of specialists on seals; SCAR plenarymeeting; several SCAR delegate meetings; several special ad hocgroups, and a meeting of the Finance Committee. As a result ofthe SCAR meeting, China was admitted as a member of SCAR,bringing the total number of countries active in SCAR to 18. Inaddition, SCAR adopted an "associate member" category to per-mit scientists from countries interested in antarctic research butnot conducting substantial research to participate fully in SCAR.Board members or representatives attended a variety of otherSCAR meetings and symposia during 1985-1986.

Other related activities pertained to the Antarctic Treaty, im-plementation of the Convention on Conservation of AntarcticMarine Living Resources, and efforts to develop a regime gov-erning possible mineral resource exploration and exploitation inAntarctica. The Board received briefings on these Treaty-relatedactivities from the Federal government representative who par-ticipated in them.

"Draft Documents of the XIX Meeting of SCAR" were dis-tributed to relevant U.S. government agenices and the U.S.scientific community.

With the discontinuance of the former SCAR Working Groupon Oceanography, a new body, Working Group Number 74,concerned with the general circulation of the southern ocean,was formed under the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Re-search (sCoR). Representing the U.S. National Committee forSCAR on this group is Board member Arnold Gordon.

The Board published and distributed the following two cata-logues of antarctic research activities:

Report on United States Antarctic Research Activities, February1984—October 1985; United States Antarctic Research ActivitiesPlanned for October 1985—September 1986. Report No. 27 toScientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Earth Science Investigations in the United States Antarctic ResearchProgram (USARP) for the period 1 July 1984-30 June 1985.

In addition, the Board continues to:• Encourage the support of SCAR through annual payments of

dues consistent with the amounts agreed on at SCAR XIX.• Advise, through SCAR, on development of the international

program for climate research in Antarctica.• Advise, through SCAR, the Antarctic Treaty nations on the

possible impacts of mineral resource exploration and exploi-tation in Antarctica.

• Advise, through SCAR, the Antarctic Treaty nations on man'simpact on the antarctic environment.

• Advise, through SCAR, on the development of an interna-tional program of antarctic sea-ice research.Reports resulting from this effort shall be distributed to spon-

sors, committee members, and other relevant parties in accor-dance with Academy policy. Reports may be made available tothe public without restrictions.

Additional information is available from the Polar ResearchBoard in Polar Research Board Annual Report 1985 and Future Plans.

SCAR coordinated data analysisproject: Riometry

R. HINDSLEY and T.J. ROSENBERG

Institute for Physical Science and TechnologyUniversity of Maryland

College Park, Maryland 20742

This project, formulated at the 1984 meeting of the ScientificCommittee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) in Bremerhaven, WestGermany, was motivated by a desire to promote internationaldata exchange and coordinated data analysis for a study of theenergetics and dynamics of the middle and upper atmosphereat high southern latitudes. The decision was made to concen-trate on two time intervals, 10-13 June and 27-29 June 1982. TheUniversity of Maryland agreed to collect antarctic nometer dataand prepare it for analysis and comparison with other types of

data (e.g., magnetometer, ionosonde, radiowave emissions,and auroral light). This paper reports on the progress of thisproject.

Data were received from 10 antarctic stations, representingseven countries; in addition, the University of Maryland ob-tained data at three other antarctic stations. The table lists thesestations and the nometer operating frequencies and time reso-lutions. Most of the data were supplied on digital magnetictape; the three Australian stations and the New Zealand stationsupplied chart records which were digitized by S.-I. Akasofu atthe University of Aklaska. For each station the diurnal variationof cosmic radio noise (quiet day curve) must be determined sothat the absorption in decibels can be calculated. When possi-ble, we calculated quiet day curves using the inflection pointmethod (Krishnaswamy, Detrick, and Rosenberg 1985) to elimi-nate a possible source of bias. This could not be done forMawson, which showed too much irregularity, or forNovolazarevskaya and Halley Bay, which had already beenconverted to absorption values.

The collection of data has just been completed and very littleanalysis has been performed. It is noteworthy, however, toconsider the six stations near the L 4 magnetic shell (equiv-

284 ANTARCTIC JOURNAL

30.0 MHz Riometer

I TirTI

30.0 MHz Riometer (W)

t11r j-- -.

Siple, A - 60.4

Oil1111L

Halley Bay, A -' 60.8

J/

30.0 MHz Riometer Sanae, A 59.8

30.0 MHz Riometer I

A62.3

i iuj jIii jriu

30.0 MHz Riometer Kerguelen, A58.5

30.0 MHz Riometer Campbell, A59.8

1 4

Antarctic riometer data for the SCAR project

Station

Campbell IslandDavisHalley BayKerguelen IslandsMacquarie IslandMawsonMcMurdoNovolazarevskayaSanaeSipleSouth PoleSyowaTerre Adelie

Country

New ZealandAustraliaUnited KingdomFranceAustraliaAustraliaU.S.A.East GermanyS. AfricaU.S.A.U.S.A.JapanFrance

GeographicLat. Long

deg S

deg

52.5

169.2 E68.6

78.0 E75.5

26.6 W49.4

70.3 E54.5

159.0 E67.6

62.9 E77.9

166.7 E70.8

11.8 E70.3

2.4 W76.0

84.0 W90.069.0

39.6 E66.7

140.0 E

Invariantlatitude

deg S

59.874.760.858.564.070.379.862.359.860.473.866.180.5

Riometerfrequency

(in megahertz)

303030303030

20,3023

20,30,5130

20,30,513030

Timeresolution

1 mm.1 mm.

20 sec.5 mm.1 mm.1 mm.1 sec.

10 mm.4 mm.2 sec.1 sec.2 sec.5 mm.

alent to an invariant latitude A = 600). These are arranged in thefigure for 10 June in order of longitude, starting with Siple andextending east to Campbell Island. The time resolution is 2

10.00

U)

< 0.0010.00

-oU,

< 0.0010.00

(I,-a< 0.00

10.000

U)-o< 0.00

10.000

Cl)-a< 0.00

1000-D

Cl)-o< 0.00

0

minutes (5 minutes for Kerguelen Island and 10 minutes forNovolazarevskaya). For Novolazarevskaya (23 megahertz) andSanae (51 megahertz), the absorption values have been convert-

UT, 10 Jun, 1982, DOY 161Riometer absorption corrected to 30 megahertz (MHz) for six antarctic stations at invariant latitudes (A near 60°). ("db" denotes "decibel:'"MHz" denotes "megahertz." "UT" denotes "universal time:' "DOY" denotes "day of year:')

1986 REVIEW 285

ed to 30 megahertz assuming that absorption is inversely pro-portional to the square of the frequency. The first four stationsshow fairly similar responses for this day, but Kerguelen Islandand Campbell Island are lower in amplitude and do not showmany of the absorption events seen at the other four stations.This pattern holds generally over all 7 days of the SCAR interval.There are several possible explanations for this pattern (e.g., therelationship of these stations to the location of the South Atlan-tic magnetic anomaly and to energetic particle-trapping bound-aries), but more work will be needed to determine the specificcause.

The riometer and other collected data sets were presentedand discussed at the Upper Atmosphere Physics Data AnalysisWorkshop held in San Diego on 18 June 1986 during the Nine-

teenth Meeting of SCAR. The data offered global a perspective ofthe Southern Hemisphere disturbance patterns. Specific scien-tific objectives were formulated for further analysis of the data.Progress reports will appear in future issues of this journal.

The University of Maryland's Antarctic riometer program issupported by National Science Foundation grant DPP 83-04844.

References

Krishnaswamy, S., D. Detrick and T.J. Rosenberg. 1985. The InflectionPoint Method of Determining Riometer Quiet Day Curves. RadioScience, 20, 1, 123-136.

Data analysis phase of the BIOMASSprogram

S.Z. EL-SAYED

Department of OceanographyTexas A&M University

College Station, Texas 77843

The Biological Investigations of Marine Antarctic Systemsand Stocks (BIOMASS) is a major collaborative effort of scientistsconcerned with providing an adequate basis of knowledge forthe wise management of the living resources of the southernocean. This international program grew out of the scientificcommunity's concern for maintaining the delicate ecologicalbalance in the oceans surrounding Antarctica. The First Inter-national BIOMASS Experiment (FIBEx) conducted in austral sum-mer 1980-1981 was the largest multiship experiment in biolog-ical oceanography ever undertaken in the southern ocean. TheSecond International BIOMASS Experiment (SIBEx) was com-pleted in 1984-1985.

With the successful completion of the field exercise aspect ofthe BIOMASS program, a new phase of data analysis and inter-pretation is being ushered in. Ensuring that full advantage istaken of the enormous amount of data collected will require aseries of workshops to process information and report on thefindings. These workshops will be of both a disciplinary (i.e.,krill, birds, fish, etc.) and interdisciplinary (e.g., ecosystemmodeling) nature. A final meeting to evaluate the achievementsof the decade of BIOMASS (1976-1986) is planned for 1989.

Present BIOMASS activities include operation of the BIOMASSData Center, planning data analysis workshops, and publishingrelated information. The international cooperation and com-munication fostered by the FIBEX and SIBEX programs continue inthe present phase.

The BIOMASS Data Center, located at the British AntarcticSurvey (BAs), Cambridge, United Kingdom, is now fully opera-tional. The Data Center has compiled all FIBEX data and is cur-rently loading and validating SIBEX data. Once all the data areloaded, the database will be available for use by BIOMASSscientists. All data are tagged with the date and time of observa-

tion or sampling, so that concurrent measurements of the sever-al parameters can be tested for correlations. The correlationbetween bird density and krill swarms can be evaluated bylooking at the times krill swarms were seen, then finding thebird observation records made at the same time. The data arealso categorized by the name of the ship which supplied thedata, making it easy to examine the results from a single countryor group of countries. The ability to store derived data points,such as those created in workshops, will allow future access tosuch values.

Data anlysis workshops in seven areas are being planned.These workshops will be held between now and 1989. A work-shop on krill physiology and biochemistry will highlight futureareas of research through an exchange of information aboutcurrent research projects in the areas of reproduction, feeding,moulting, oxygen consumption, season biochemistry, energet-ics of larval development, and growth rate. The objective of thefish ecology workshop will be to validate SIBEX data on ich-thyoplankton, including mesopelagic fish. Objectives will thenbe formulated for a final evaluation workshop. Factors controll-ing the distribution of krill larvae and the characteristics of areasof abundant krill larvae will be determined during the krill larvalecology workshop. A workshop on phytoplankton/zoo-plankton interrelationships will address the following: speciesas indicators of water masses, horizontal and vertical pa-tchliness in relation to bottom topography, interaction betweenspecies, seasonal succession and interannual variation of spe-cies composition and biomass, and the relation between phy-toplankton and zooplankton. Data analysis workshops are alsobeing planned in the areas of physical and chemical oceanogra-phy and krill acoustics.

Throughout the course of the BIOMASS program, findingshave been recorded and distributed through various publica-tions, including a semiannual newsletter. A report series, scien-tific series, and handbook series have been produced, and morepublications are planned as workshop results become available.Recently published in the Scientific Series are: Review of theBiology and Present Status of Exploited Antarctic Fish Stocks editedby K. H. Kock, C. Duhamel, and J. C. Hureau; and Atlas of PolishOceanographic Observations in Antarctic Waters. A review of krillecology will be published in late 1986.

Current activities are leading the way for the 1989 evaluationmeeting which will promote interdisciplinary synthesis of allBIOMASS results.

286 ANTARCTIC JOURNAL