US offers to share benefits from road to South Pole

By SIMON COLLINS

The United States is offering New Zealand new opportunities for scientific experiments if it goes ahead with a plan to build a "road" to the South Pole.

Antarctica NZ chief executive Lou Sanson told the Antarctic Conference in Dunedin yesterday that the Americans had asked him whether New Zealand scientists would have any uses for the road.

"The US has talked to us of the opportunities this will raise," he said.

The "road" - an ice route likely to be useable only in summer - would connect the US South Pole Station and the main US Antarctic base at McMurdo Station, near New Zealand's Scott Base.

New Zealand and the US already share logistical arrangements to supply McMurdo Station and Scott Base from the joint NZ/US Antarctic Centre at Christchurch Airport.

Mr Sanson said NZ scientists might use the South Pole road for geological research in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains or for digging "ice cores" deep in the Antarctic continent to assess long-term climatic change.

Coincidentally, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences is seeking money for a facility in New Zealand to store and study ice cores from the Southern Alps as well as Antarctica, again with American collaboration.

"A lot of US ice core facilities are full. If New Zealand creates one, there are huge opportunities for joint research, particularly on climate change," Mr Sanson said.

He said the US had so far produced only an initial report on the environmental effect of a South Pole road, and it expected to take three years to produce a full report before any construction began.



"There is certainly some concern about the loss of wilderness values.

"But when I listen to the US argument on the research in full and the facilitating of new areas for research, you can see very significant benefit.

"It opens up for research huge new tracts of Antarctica - access to the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and the East and West Antarctic ice sheets for ice coring and things like that.

Mr Sanson also outlined plans for New Zealand's biggest investment in the Antarctic since Scott Base was largely rebuilt in the 1970s - a $3.5 million field store at the base which will allow scientists to prepare their gear in a warm building before going out into the field.



"We've always had the old cargo hangar where our guys are working in winter at sometimes minus 45C."