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BOOK REVIEW
Subglacial Lake Vostok:
Glacilogy, Biology and Planetology
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Subglacial Lake Vostok: Glaciology, Biology and Planetology is very timely, as the subject has been in the news for some years because of its importance to a variety of scientific disciplines. The author was involved in several aspects of its history of discovery, scientific drilling, and interpretation of results obtained from radio-echo sounding to present-day proposals to penetrate the lake itself for sampling of the water and its bottom sediments.
With a cover of some 4,000m of ice overlying it and occupying a depression in the bedrock beneath Russia’s Vostok station, Lake Vostok is about 250 by 50 km (about the size of Lake Ontario), and perhaps 1,000m deep as determined by seismic studies. It may well be, as the author indicates, that the discovery of Lake Vostok is among the most important geographical discoveries of the second half of the previous century.
The bottom of the lake is at the pressure melting point, warmed by geothermal heat. Because this area of the East Antarctic ice sheet has been relatively stable for probably hundreds of thousands of years or more, it is possible that evidence of micro-organisms (bacteria) might exist there.
A number of technical problems occurred in attaining a depth of more than 3,600m when drilling ceased at about 130m above the surface of the lake. Samples at that depth showed the ice to be accreted from frozen lake water. Penetration halted as a precaution until proper technical issues could be satisfied so that the lake would not be contaminated when penetration of a sampling device occurred.
The proposed device is described in detail by the author, although critics have stated that the technique is not foolproof, and it is best to wait for consensus among the international community as to when and how the final meters should be penetrated and the lake water sampled.
Drilling has continued so that less than 100 meters remains of the ice before lake water is entered. Concerns still exist in some respects because it is known that numerous other lakes exist beneath the ice sheet of Antarctica, located near ice divides, and it is possible that some are interconnected by sub-ice plumbing. With that in mind, any contamination of Lake Vostok could affect others.
The bottom line for this exercise is not in this book, but the next few years will no doubt have some answers to critical questions, as well as how the lake was sampled successfully. Applications of the Lake Vostok study to planetary studies include plans to penetrate the ice cover of Europa (a moon of Jupiter) for subglacial water, as well as subglacial lakes beneath Martian ice. Another Igor Zotikov book will undoubtedly enter the scene in years to come to explain how this can be done, or was done, and appropriate credit will be given to this forward-thinking Russian glaciologist.
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