Antarctica
Each year, scientists from 28 different nations conduct experiments not reproducible in any other place in the world. In the summer more than 4,000 scientists operate research stations; this number decreases to just over 1,000 in the winter. McMurdo Station, which is the largest research station in Antarctica, is capable of housing more than 1,000 scientists, visitors, and tourists.
Kathleen Conlan
Conlan is currently a Research Scientist at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Her research focuses on communities of marine life on the sea floor of the Antarctic and Arctic and the impacts of natural or anthropogenic changes. Conlan’s research has had significant impact. Her study of long-term benthic changes near McMurdo Station helped change the U.S. Antarctic Program’s procedures for sewage discharge in the Antarctic. She also discovered that the B-15 iceberg (the world’s largest recorded iceberg) in Antarctica could impact benthic life over 100 km as it blocked access to their main food supply, the annual plankton bloom. This is a far-reaching effect that had not been previously documented.