LARISSAIPY project planned for 2009-10 field season in Antarctic PeninsulaThe LARsen Ice Shelf System, Antarctica , project is an interdisciplinary program to study as many facets of an ice shelf ecosystem as possible following the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002. Some of the leading polar researchers in the U.S. Antarctic Program will use their expertise to understand the conditions that led up to disintegration, looking not only at the more immediate evidence, but traveling back thousands of years in the region's climate history to determine if the event was part of a longer natural cycle or an aberration of the extreme warming now under way along the Antarctic Peninsula. Other team members will delve into consequences of the collapse, such as the effect on a formerly hidden ecosystem that existed under the shadow of the ice shelf before it disappeared, and how the absence of the shelf is changing the local biology and ocean properties. Articles in this series include:
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