Ice Defines Strategic Role
McMurdo Sound's role as a strategic waterway dates back to early 20th century Antarctic exploration. British explorers Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott built bases on the sound's shoreline as jumping-off points for their overland expeditions to the South Pole.
McMurdo Sound's logistic importance continues today. Aircraft transporting cargo and passengers land upon frozen runways at Williams Field located on the McMurdo Ice Shelf. Moreover the annual sealift of a cargo ship and fuel tanker rely upon the sound as a supply route to the continent's largest base at McMurdo Station. Both the U.S. base and New Zealand's nearby Scott Base are located on the southern tip of Ross Island.
Ross Island is the southmost piece of land in Antarctica that is accessible by ship. In addition, the harbor at McMurdo's Winter Quarters Bay is the world's southmost seaport (Department of Geography, Texas A&M University). The access by ships depends upon favorable ice conditions.
McMurdo Sound during austral winter presents a virtually impenetrable expanse of surface ice. Even during summer, ships approaching McMurdo Sound are often blocked by various concentrations of first-year ice, fast ice (connected to the shoreline), and hard multi-year ice. Subsequently, icebreakers are required for maritime resupply missions to McMurdo Station. Nonetheless, ocean currents and fierce Antarctic winds can drive pack ice north into the Ross Sea, temporarily producing areas of open water.
Read more about this topic: McMurdo Sound
Famous quotes containing the words ice, defines, strategic and/or role:
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“We should always be prepared so as never to err to believe that what I see as white is black, if the hierarchic Church defines it thus.”
—Ignatius Of Loyola (1491–1556)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Always and everywhere children take an active role in the construction and acquisition of learning and understanding. To learn is a satisfying experience, but also, as the psychologist Nelson Goodman tells us, to understand is to experience desire, drama, and conquest.”
—Carolyn Edwards (20th century)