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Vol. 38, No. 18
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1-7-2009
By: Jeff McCallister Ohio State leaves its mark on AntarcticaAs Kathy Welch was planning this, her 16th season of field study in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, she learned something that made her consider trying to add an extra side-trip to her four-month South Pole stay.
Welch, a geochemist working with the United States Long-Term Ecological Research Network and research associate in the Environmental Geochemistry group at the Byrd Polar Research Center, joined a distinguished and ever-growing list of people from Ohio State to have geological features of the icy continent named for them.
The Antarctic Appeal
For most people, Antarctica might not seem like a dream destination. But for Ohio State geochemist Kathy Welch, it’s been an annual trek for 16 years.
What’s the appeal?
“Working in Antarctica has been such a significant part of my life,” she said. “I’ve spent the equivalent of more than five years here, more than 60 months.
“I keep coming back because I enjoy this research and I find Antarctica to be a beautiful place,” she said. “The lifestyle is addictive. There is a wonderful community of people here.”
And believe it or not, the weather is a factor as well.
“I haven’t really experienced winter since 1992,” she said. “It can be cold here, but we have 24 hours of daylight in the summer. I leave Columbus in the fall and head to Antarctica for the southern hemisphere summer and then return to Columbus again in March.” |
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The United States Geological Survey notified Welch over the summer that a “steep rugged peak” located in a mountain range near her work base had been named the “Welch Crag” in her honor.
“I felt truly honored to have an Antarctic feature of any size or type named after me,” she said by e-mail from McMurdo Station. “I didn’t choose it, although it is a pretty cool looking wind-sculptured feature. I have not seen it in person yet, but I hope to get there some day.”
There are now at least 90 features named for people with Ohio State ties, according to Lynn Lay, research librarian at the Byrd Center. Another half-dozen or so, such as the Buckeye Ridge, are named more generally for the university or the State. There’s even a glacier named for the Olentangy River.
Antarctica’s unique situation on the planet as a continent with no permanent settlements complicates the naming process for features, so the USGS has in place a set of naming conventions specific to Antarctica.
Features are categorized into three levels, with first-order features such as coasts, extensive mountain ranges, large glaciers and the like reserved to be named after leaders of important expeditions to Antarctica or others who have made outstanding contributions to the scientific knowledge or exploration (many larger features, for example, are named for Adm. Richard Byrd, who led five expeditions there in the middle part of the last century).
The Welch Crag is a third-order feature, for which the naming criteria includes “persons whose contributions to knowledge in their respective fields have facilitated the discovery, recognition, identification, or recording of Antarctic phenomena,” according to the USGS.
The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names of the US Board on Geographic Names must approve all nominations before they’re assigned.
“It’s a nice honor in the sense that someone, one of your peers, has thought that you contributed enough to the science in Antarctica to have something there named after you,” said Berry Lyons, director of the Byrd Polar Research Center. “It’s one of those things that not a lot of people might ever know about, but that acknowledgement of your contribution to the science can be very gratifying.”
Lyons himself has two Antarctic features named for him—a mile-long creek and a summit similar to the Welch Crag that’s called the Lyons Cone.
Lyons said the sheer volume of features already named for Ohio State scientists is a good measure of the work being done there.
“The Byrd Polar Research Center has been a major player there since 1960,” he said. “We have a long history of doing research there and we have a very distinguished record.”
In fact, the earliest recorded Ohio State feature there is Mount Goldthwait, a prominent mountain named for the first director of the Institute of Polar Studies (which became the Byrd Center in 1987).
The most recent is the Willis Ridge, named for geologist Mike Willis, entered into the record in August 2007. The Welch Crag was named in 2005, but the USGS only notified her of the decision this past summer.
“I do think the OSU legacy of scientific research and discovery in Antarctica is impressive and I’m proud to be part of this tradition,” Welch said. “Now that I have a feature named after me, I am part of that group of researchers too, which is very exciting.”
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