An image of the contours of the bed of Lake Vostok.

Anahita Tikku, a research scientist in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Rensselaer, and scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University have developed the first map of water depth in Lake Vostok, which lies between 3,700 and 4,300 meters (more than two miles) below the continental Antarctic ice sheet and is roughly the size of Lake Ontario.

The National Science Foundation supported the mapping, which used measurements made with a laser altimeter, ice-penetrating radar, and gravity measurements collected by aircraft. The team published the new maps in the June 19 edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

According to the new measurements, Lake Vostok is divided into two distinct basins that may create very different water chemistry and other characteristics in each basin. Water circulation begins from the base of the ice sheet as ice melts predominantly over the smaller northern basin, and then refreezes over the larger southern basin. The researchers assert that water takes between 55,000 and 110,000 years to cycle through the lake.

The lake is thought to be a very good terrestrial analog of conditions on Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter. If life can exist in Vostok, scientists have argued, then microbes also might thrive on Europa. Currently, no scientific sampling of the lake is being carried out. But, scientists say a great deal of technological development would be needed to conduct contamination-free sampling of the lake bottom to look for microbes.


Originally published in Rensselaer Magazine, Fall 2004
Graphic by Michael Studinger/National Science Foundation

Published October 1, 2004