Lower Erebus Hut

Overview

The Lower Erebus Hut (LEH) is a permanent field facility located on Mount Erebus in Ross Island, Antarctica. The hut is the home of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory [http://erebus.nmt.edu MEVO] , run by New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology [http://www.nmt.edu NMT] . The installation comprises two huts, one kitchen and recreation building and one working and storage building.

History

The permanent LEH was built in November 1992 as a replacement for the Upper hut and other semi-permanent jamesway huts.

Location

LEH is located on the northern side Mount Erebus within its caldera rim. The location facilitates easy ski-doo/hiking trips to the crater rim where the volcano's persistent lava lake is visible.The exact coordinates of the hut defined by a UNAVCO benchmark are
77 30 37.6131 S
167 08 45.829 E
3347.31 (~3401.89 m MSL)UNAVCO website for Lower Erebus Hut [http://facility.unavco.org/project_support/polar/geodetic_main/geodetic/sites/elht.html] ]

cience

Major support for all operations at LEH are conducted through McMurdo Station run by a division of NSF, the USAP.

LEH is used as a base of operations for the monitoring of Mt Erebus and maintenance of such equipment. The work force at LEH, which is comprised of senior research scientists, professors and graduate students, maintains both the scientific and logisitical equipment on the mountain. Gaseous emission concentration, composition and flux as well as thermal image stills, visible and IR video, and infrasonic, of the lava lake are all data collected by researchers based at LEH.

References

External links

* [http://www.nmt.edu NMT] New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
* [http://erebus.nmt.edu MEVO] Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory
* [http://facility.unavco.org/project_support/polar/geodetic_main/geodetic/geodetic.html UNAVCO] UNAVCO Polar Services - Antarctic - Geodetic Benchmarks