Ross Ice Shelf Conservation Zone
The Ross Ice Shelf Conservation Zone (80°S 148°W) is a protected area of Westarctica created to preserve Ross Ice Shelf and its surrounding area. It was created via Royal Decree on 20 April 2005 by Grand Duke Travis. It falls under the oversight of the Westarctican Parks Service.
History
On 5 January 1841, the British Admiralty's Ross expedition in the Erebus and the Terror, three-masted ships with specially strengthened wooden hulls, was going through the pack ice of the Pacific near Antarctica in an attempt to determine the position of the South Magnetic Pole. Four days later, they found their way into open water and were hoping that they would have a clear passage to their destination. But on 11 January, the men were faced with an enormous mass of ice.
The ice shelf is named after Sir James Clark Ross, who discovered it on 28 January 1841. It was originally called "The Barrier", with various adjectives including "Great Ice Barrier", as it prevented sailing further south. Ross mapped the ice front eastward to 160° W. In 1947, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names applied the name "Ross Shelf Ice" to this feature and published it in the original U.S. Antarctic Gazetteer. In January 1953, the name was changed to "Ross Ice Shelf"; that name was published in 1956.
For later Antarctic explorers seeking to reach the South Pole, the Ross Ice Shelf became a starting area. In a first exploration of the area by the Discovery Expedition in 1901–1904, Robert Falcon Scott made a significant study of the shelf and its surroundings from his expedition's base on Ross Island. By measurement of calved ice bergs and their buoyancy, he estimated the ice sheet to be on average 274 meters thick; the undisturbed morphology of the ice sheet and its inverted temperature profile led him to conclude it was floating on water; and measurements in 1902–1903 showed it had advanced 555 meters northwards in 13.5 months. The findings were presented at a lecture entitled "Universitas Antarctica!" given 7 June 1911 and were published in the account of Scott's second expedition (the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–1913).
The modern-day Westarctican portion of the Ross Ice Shelf was the location of Little Rockford, an Antarctic exploration base from December 1958 to January 1965, which was located on the Ross Ice Shelf, south of the Bay of Whales. Little Rockford was a field camp and weather station along the Little America tractor trail and was located between McMurdo Sound and Byrd Station, 160 miles from Little America. It was named after Rockford, Illinois, the hometown of Admiral George Dufek. Admiral Dufek was in charge of the United States military mission, through the United States Navy, to support research in Antarctica named Operation Deep Freeze, and the first man to land at the South Pole by airplane.
It was on the list of five recommended areas to protect made by Jordan Farmer to Grand Duke Travis in March of 2025. On 20 April 2025, Grand Duke Travis declared the Westarctican area of the Ross Ice Shelf a conservation zone under the oversight of the Westarctican Parks Service.
Conservans Protectorem
Those nobles whose titles were named for features within the memorial when it was established were afforded the additional honorific Conservans Protectorem to use in conjunction with said title. Ross Ice Shelf Conservation Zone conferred this honorofic on only one Peer: the Count of Raymond.
Features
While only a small fraction of the Ross Ice Shelf is within the borders of Westarctica, as the world's largest single deposit of freshwater ice, its preservation is of critical importance to the world's balance. Should the shelf melt, it would have a paradigm-altering effect on not just ocean levels, but also sea salinity, and changes to both from its loss would irrevocably alter coastal and marine biomes. Due to these concerns, it was deemed crucial that Westarctica do whatever it can to protect the area and raise awareness of its plight with the small foothold its portion of oversight provides.
The zone comprises the entirety of the Ross shelf within Westarctican borders, including the surrounding shores; with portions of MacAyeal Ice Stream and the nearmost areas of the Harrison and Shabtale ice streams.
Key locations
- Harrison Ice Ridge (79°30′S 146°0′W) is an ice ridge between Echelmeyer Ice Stream and MacAyeal Ice Stream on the Shirase Coast of Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names after William D. Harrison of the Geophysics Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, a United States Antarctic Program investigator of ice flow dynamics in the margin of the nearby Whillans Ice Stream, 1992–93 and 1993–94, and at Siple Dome, 2001–02.
- MacAyeal Ice Stream (80°S 143°W), formerly Ice Stream E, is an ice stream in Antarctica flowing west to the juncture of Shirase Coast and Siple Coast between Bindschadler Ice Stream and Echelmeyer Ice Stream. It is one of several major ice streams draining from Marie Byrd Land into the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice streams were investigated and mapped by U.S. Antarctic Research Program personnel in a number of field seasons from 1983 to 1984 onwards and named Ice Stream A, B, C, etc., according to their position from south to north. The name was changed from Ice Stream E by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 2002 to honor Douglas R. MacAyeal of the Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, a U.S. Antarctic Program investigator in the Ross Sea area including study of the Ross Ice Shelf, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Marie Byrd Land ice streams, 1989–2002.
- Raymond Ice Ridge (81°35′S 135°0′W) is an Antarctic ice ridge located between Bindschadler Ice Stream and Kamb Ice Stream on Siple Coast, Marie Byrd Land. Siple Dome is at the west end of the ridge. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) after Charles F. Raymond, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, who studied the glacial history and evolution of the Marie Byrd Land ice stream system, with work on Siple Dome and the adjacent Bindschadler and Kamb ice streams in several field seasons between 1994 and 2002.
- Shabtaie Ice Ridge (80°30′S 140°0′W) is an ice ridge between MacAyeal Ice Stream and Bindschadler Ice Stream at the junction of Shirase Coast and Siple Coast, Marie Byrd Land. Named by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) after Sion Shabtaie, Geophysical and Polar Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, who, with Charles R. Bentley, 1982–84 and 1985–86, made a glaciogeophysical survey of the nearby Mercer, Whillans and Kamb Ice Streams (formerly Ice Streams A, B and C) and the intervening ice ridges.
- Siple Dome (81°39′15″S 149°00′18″W) is an ice dome approximately 100 km wide and 100 km long, located 130 km east of Siple Coast in Antarctica. Charles Bentley and Robert Thomas established a "strain rosette" on this feature to determine ice movement in 1973–74. They referred to the feature as Siple Dome because of its proximity to Siple Coast. Only a small portion along the northern edge of the dome is protected.