Andrew Nyblade ’82 enjoys going to extremes in his quest to unlock the mysteries of geological phenomenon. A geoscientist at The Pennsylvania State University since 1992, Nyblade recently joined colleagues from the University of Alabama and

Washington University in leading a research team to McMurdo Station in Antarctica — a place freelance writer John Pollack calls “a tenacious human beachhead that clings to the rough, volcanic scree at the foot of Mt. Erebus, some 2,000 miles south of New Zealand.”

Forty-mile wind gusts racing off glaciers and across miles of unobstructed sea ice regularly greeted Nyblade and his colleagues during their sixweek stay on the continent, according to Pollack, who traveled with the 15-member team to write about the experience. “The stark beauty of the continent surprised me the most,” Nyblade said.

The grandeur of the Transantarctic Mountains he came to study also impressed him. Conducted in November and December 2001 and Icy quest Andrew Nyblade ’82 leads research team to Antarctica funded by the National Science Foundation, the research project, called the Transantarctic

Mountains Seismic Experiment or TAMSEIS, aimed to provide a better understanding of how the Transantarctic Mountains formed. Nyblade, who earned his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Michigan and his M.S in geophysics from the University of Wyoming, chose to study this mountain range, which splits the continent into east and west, because it is the only one in the world not created by two plates colliding.

To understand why, Nyblade and the team installed 36 seismic stations in addition to the eight already in place in the vicinity of McMurdo Station, the largest community in Antarctica and the home of the U.S. Antarctic Program. Hundreds of researchers travel to McMurdo Station each year hoping to learn more about Antarctica, which almost equals the size of North America.

Following the placement of the seismic stations near McMurdo, the team then extended a 1,400-kilometer chain of seismic stations across the vast east Antarctic plateau. To accomplish this, team members were dropped by a Twin Otter airplane to a remote camp at 12,000 feet, a place where the air is thin, and the daytime highs are minus-25 degrees Celsius.

“Spending 10 days on the polar plateau was pretty awesome — nothing but flat whiteness for hundreds and hundreds of miles,” Nyblade said. Although it will take months to analyze all the data, Nylade’s preliminary findings indicate that the crust is different in these mountains.

“The crust under the mountain range is of normal thickness, about 40 kilometers, unlike many other large mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas or Andes, where the crust is 60-80 kilometers thick,” he said. Interestingly, Nyblade, whose current research interests include geophysics, tectonics and applied s e i smol og y , wasn’t even considering geology when he arrived at Wittenberg.

However, his interest soon piqued after taking an introductory course on the subject with Robert Morris, professor of geology. “He got me hooked on geology and then subsequent courses taught by Professors Tom Gerrard, Floyd Nave, Kathy Bladh and Ken Bladh helped to solidify my interest in geology,” he said.

“I am where I am today in large part because of their strong commitment to education and their enthusiasm for teaching geology.” Now widely published in the field, Nyblade regularly teaches on a variety of geological subjects at Penn State. He has also served as chair of the geophysics division of the Geological Society of America, as an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research, and on the executive committee of the Incorporated Research Institutes of Seismology (IRIS) consortium.

As for his research in Antarctica, Nyblade next hopes to learn more about the structure of the Transantarctic Mountains. “We want to get an accurate image of the structure of the crust and upper mantle beneath the Transantarctic Mountains and then use these images to evaluate [test] models for the formation of the mountain range.” — Karen Gerboth ’93