Wright Valley, Southern Victoria Land

Table 19.8 Stratigraphy of glacial deposits in Wright Valley, southern Victoria Land (HaU et al. 1993)...

Chemical Analyses of Brine in Don Juan Pond of Wright Valley, Southern Victoria Land (Compiled by Jones 1969)... 

Calkin PE, BehUng RE, Bull C (1970) Glacial history of Wright Valley, southern Victoria Land, Antarctica Antarctic J US 5(l) 22-27... 

Jones LM, Faure G (1967) Origin of salts in Lake Vanda, Wright Valley, southern Victoria Land, Antarctica. Earth Planet Sci Lett 3 101-106... 

Next, the Terra Nova took a four-man team led by Griffith Taylor across McMurdo Sound in order to explore the ice-free valleys of southern Victoria Land (Strange and Bashford 2008). The members of this team included Charles Wright, Frank Debenham, and Edgar Evans. 

Fig. 3.5 The western end of Wright Valley in southern Victoria Land is framed by the Olympus Range in the north and the Asgard Range in the south. Ice from the East Antarctic ice sheet of the polar plateau enters the valley via the Airdevronsix icefaU and forms the Wright Upper Glacier. The Labyrinth at its base was carved by meltwater streams flowing under pressure at the base of a glacier that once flUed the Wright Valley. Lake Vanda is peren-...

Fig. 3.8 Geologic map of the western Wright Valley in southern Victoria Land. This area is included in Fig. 3.5 (Adapted from McKelvey and Webb 1962)...

These isotopic data combined with the chemical compositions published by Borg et al. (1986) strongly support the conclusion that the Granite Harbor Intrusives of northern Victoria Land are S-type granitoids. This conclusion applies also to the Wright and Vanda Intrusives of the ice-free valleys of southern Victoria Land and perhaps to some of the Cambro-Ordovician granitic plutons elsewhere in the Transantarctic Mountains. 

The geologists who accompanied Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton to Antarctica were amazed when they entered the mountains of southern Victoria Land and discovered the ice-free valleys such as Wright Valley in Fig. 10.1 (Sections 1.4, 2.3, and 3.1). The modem traveler entering the ice-free valleys by helicopter from McMurdo is similarly affected because the wide U-shaped valleys present a familiar view of sandy plains dotted with lakes and ponds filled with liquid water and of meltwater streams that flow from alpine glaciers descending from the high mountain ranges that frame these valleys. 

Fig. 10.1 Wright Valley In southern Victoria Land is ice-free and contains the Onyx River which flows inland from Lake Brown worth at the base of the Wright Lower Glacier near the...

Fig. 10.5 The Wright Valley in southern Victoria Land slopes west, away from the coast, and contains the Onyx River which flows from Lake Brownwoith at the foot of the Wright Lower Glacier to Lake Vanda at the western end of the valley (Fig. 3.5). The Asgard Range south of Wright Valley supports several valley glaciers which were named by Professor R.L. Nichols after...

Table 10.2 Expanded stratigraphy of the Beacon Supergroup between the Olympus Range (Wright Valley) and the Boomerang Range (Skelton Ndve) in southern Victoria Land (McKelvey et al. 1970)...

The crustal characteristics of the Jurassic doler-ites of Antarctica and Tasmania relate these rocks to each other and set them apart from Jurassic dolerite in southern Africa and Brazil. This point was emphasized by Compston et al. (1968) in a direct comparison of Rb-Sr systematics of Mesozoic basaltic rocks in southern Victoria Land, Tasmania, South Africa, and South America. In addition, these authors reported K-Ar dates for plagioclase and pyroxene from a pegmatoid in the Lake Vanda sill in Wright Valley of southern Victoria Land. The results indicated a Middle Jurassic age for the Ferrar Dolerite, in agreement with the age of the Tasmanian Dolerite and the K-Ar dates of the Wisanger Basalt on Kangaroo Island of South Australia reported later by McDougall and Wellman (1976). 

Fig. 13.1 The Wright Valley in southern Victoria Land contains three sills of Ferrar Dolerite The Basement sill intruded the Granite Harbor Intrusives of the local basement, the Peneplain siU lies between the granitic basement and the overlying sandstones of the Beacon Supergroup, and the uppermost sill was injected...

Fig. 19.16 The ice-free valleys of southern Victoria Land include the Victoria, Wright, and Taylor valleys. In addition, small ice-free valleys occur along the Koetflitz Glacier (i.e., the Garwood, Marshall, Miers, and Hidden valleys). This area also includes the Dromedary Platform, The Bulwark, and the Pyramid.

Fig. 19.18 The Wright Valley in southern Victoria Land is ice-free except for the glaciers at its upper and lower ends. In addition, Wright Valley contains numerous alpine glaciers along its south waU (e.g., Bartley, Meserve, Hart, etc.). The intermittent meltwater streams that are discharged by these glaciers during the summer (December and January) feed the Onyx River which flows west from the Wright Lower Glacier on the coast to Lake...

Fig. 19.20 The Cenozoic volcanic rocks of the McMurdo Volcanic Group in the Wright, Taylor, and Ferrar valleys of southern Victoria Land were erupted between 5.0 and 1.5 Ma (Pliocene), whereas the eruptions in the ice-free valleys north of the Koettlitz Glacier (Fig. 19.19) started at 3.0 Ma and lasted well into the Pleistocene. The eruptions in both areas were subaerial rather than subglacial and occurred after the Transantarctic Mountains of southern Victoria Land had been overridden by the East Antarctic ice sheet (Data from Armstrong 1968 Fleck et al. 1972 Barrett et al. 1992 Wilch et al. 1993b HaU et al. 1993)...

The principal lakes of southern Victoria Land that attract attention by their size and by the salinities and chemical compositions of the brines they contain are Lake Vida in Victoria Valley (Calkin and Bull 1967), Lake Vanda and Don Juan Pond in Wright Valley, Lake Bonney, Lake Hoare, and Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley, and Lake Miers in the ice-free valleys along the Koettlitz Glacier (Matsubaya et al. 1979 Matsumoto et al. 1993 Lyons and Finlay 2008). 

The remarkably abundant flora that exists in Lake Vanda and in the water of other lakes in southern Victoria Land defies the harsh climatic conditions of the surface. For example, the average annual temperature in Wright Valley at Lake Vanda is -19.8°C and the rate of meteoric precipitation is less than 10 mm/year. Although algae thrive in the lakes, fish and other kinds of animals with backbones have not been observed in any of the lakes in southern Victoria Land (Benoit and Hall 1970 Cameron et al. 1970 Horowitz et al. 1972 Parker and Simmons 1978 Parker et al. 1982 Love et al. 1983 Vincent and Howard-Williams 1989 Aiken etal. 1991 Simmons et al. 1993) (See also Lyons et al. 1984). 

Calkin PE, Bull C (1972) Interaction of the East Antarctic ice sheet, alpine glaciations, and sea level in the Wright Valley area, southern Victoria Land. In Adie RJ (ed) Antarctic geology and geophysics. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Norway, pp 435-440... 

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