The Lower Erebus Hut is a permanent field facility located on Mount Erebus

Mount Erebus

Mount Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost historically active volcano on Earth, the second highest volcano in Antarctica , and the 6th highest ultra mountain on an island. With a summit elevation of , it is located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes, notably Mount...

 in Ross Island

Ross Island

Ross Island is an island formed by four volcanoes in the Ross Sea near the continent of Antarctica, off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound.-Geography:...

, Antarctica. The hut is the home of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory MEVO, run by New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 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 hut

Jamesway hut

Jamesway hut is portable and easy-to-assemble hut, designed for arctic weather conditions. This version of the Quonset hut was created by James Manufacturing Company of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. A Jamesway hut had wooden ribs and an insulated fabric covering for the Army Air Corps...

s.

Location

LEH is located on the northern side Mount Erebus within its caldera

Caldera

A caldera is a cauldron-like volcanic feature usually formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption, such as the one at Yellowstone National Park in the US. They are sometimes confused with volcanic craters...

 rim. The location facilitates easy ski-doo/hiking trips to the crater rim where the volcano's persistent lava lake

Lava lake

Lava lakes are large volumes of molten lava, usually basaltic, contained in a volcanic vent, crater, or broad depression. The term is used to describe both lava lakes that are wholly or partly molten and those that are solidified...

 is visible.
The exact coordinates of the hut defined by a UNAVCO

UNAVCO

UNAVCO is a non-profit membership-governed university consortium that facilitates geoscience research and education using geodesy. The UNAVCO academic and research community shares a collective vision to transform human understanding of the changing Earth by enabling the integration of innovative...

 benchmark are
77° 30′ 37.6131" S
167° 08′ 45.829" E

3347.31 (~3401.89 m MSL).

Science

Major support for all operations at LEH are conducted through McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station

McMurdo Station is a U.S. Antarctic research center located on the southern tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program, a branch of the National...

 run by a division of NSF

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

, the United States Antarctic Program

United States Antarctic Program

United States Antarctic Program is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the continent of Antarctica. It co-ordinates research and the operational support for research in the region...

(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 composed of senior research scientists, professors and graduate students, maintains both the scientific and logistical 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.

External links

• NMT New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
• MEVO Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory
• UNAVCO UNAVCO Polar Services - Antarctic - Geodetic Benchmarks