[Rockhounds] 'Giant MRI of Antarctica' reveals 'fossil seawater' under ice sheet

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Beneath a fast-flowing ice stream in West Antarctica, scientists have
discovered a vast aquifer brimming with seawater that's likely been locked
down there for thousands of years.

This is the first time scientists have detected groundwater beneath an ice
stream in *Antarctica*
<https://www.livescience.com/21677-antarctica-facts.html>, and the
discovery could reshape our understanding of how the frigid continent
reacts to *climate change*
<https://www.livescience.com/climate-change.html> and
what kinds of mysterious organisms lurk beneath its many ice shelves.

The newfound groundwater system can be thought of as a giant sponge, made
up of porous sediment and saturated with water, said Chloe D. Gustafson,
lead author of a new study on the buried aquifer, formerly a geophysicist
at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and now based at
UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "The 'sponge' that we
observe is anywhere from half a kilometer to about two kilometers thick
[0.3 to 1.2 miles], so it's pretty deep," she told Live Science.

Gustafson and her colleagues described the sizable *aquifer*
<https://www.livescience.com/39625-aquifers.html#:~:text=The%20groundwater%20contained%20in%20aquifers,,%20lakes,%20rivers%20and%20wetlands.>
in
a report published Thursday (May 5) in the journal *Science*
<http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm3301?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D23093234137653293603044630514166490186%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1651519270&_ga=2.129133065.406389619.1651498884-258772416.1572545294>.
The aquifer lies beneath the same ice stream as a subglacial lake called
Lake Whillans, which sits at a shallower depth, about 2,625 feet (800
meters) under the ice.

The aquifer beneath the Whillans ice stream is the first to be detected,
but the research team suspects that such hydrological systems lie beneath
all the ice streams in Antarctica, and are just waiting to be discovered.
These groundwater systems likely "extend hundreds of kilometers back into
the ice sheet interior," Gustafson said. The next step will be to gather
evidence of such systems elsewhere on the continent and compare what they
found at Whillans to other regions.

https://www.livescience.com/fossil-seawater-under-antarctic-ice-stream