Guess what cryoconite holes are full of, besides bacteria, algae, and microscopic animals? Glitter!
One of the measurements we make on cryoconite is the amount of organic material. We do that by weighing dried cryoconite, then burning off anything living or edible – basically the same way you would burn cookies. We put them in a hot oven for hours. We weigh them again, and the difference was the stuff that burned off. In these ecosystems, that is often less than 1% of the mass.
When we ash the samples, as we call it, they turn a beautiful golden brown, with sparkly flecks that look like the mineral mica (but we’re no geologists). We call the color “burnt cryoconite.” Well, Pacifica calls it that.
Two years ago, one of our team members (Jack) used the fact that those mica pieces are light, and float well in water, to separate them from the rest of the sediment. Then he had real glacier glitter, which he used to make a Christmas card for our field camp.
Cryo Holes 