Facilities Plan and Protocol for the Support of the National Science Foundation-Sponsored Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two: Deep Ice Core Drilling Effort

The Polar Ice Coring Office (PICO) is operated under contract by the University of Alaska for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Polar Programs. One of PICO's responsibilities is to provide logistical support and field operations management to NSF-sponsored research programs in Greenland. In addition to PICO's main office at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, it operates a field office at Sondrestrom Air Force Base in Greenland. A major activity of the Polar Ice Coring Office is to supply logistical services for the second year effort of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP-2) which includes the development of a deep ice coring drill and the support system associated with it. The program objective of GISP-2 is the recovery of a high quality, continuous ice core through the Greenland Ice Cap (3,200 m). Analysis of the ice should provide a record covering 200,000 years or more of paleoenvironmental history.