McMurdo Dry Valleys

[1] The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby glaciers.

[6] The unique conditions in the Dry Valleys are caused, in part, by katabatic winds; these occur when cold, dense air is pulled downhill by the force of gravity.

[citation needed] The McMurdo Oasis constitutes approximately 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi) of "deglaciated mountainous desert", according to McKelvey, bounded by the coastline of south Victoria Land and the Polar Plateau.

These "dry valleys" include hummocky moraines, with frozen lakes, saline ponds, sand dunes, and meltwater streams.

The Palaeozoic Granite Harbour intrusives include granitoid plutons and dykes, which intruded into the metasedimentary Skelton Group in the Late Cambrian–Early Ordovician during the Ross orogeny.

The McMurdo Volcanic Group intrudes, or is interbedded with, the Taylor and Wright Valleys' moraines as basaltic cinder cones and lava flows.

[11] Scientists consider the Dry Valleys perhaps the closest of any terrestrial environment to the planet Mars, and thus an important source of insights into possible extraterrestrial life.

[14] In 2014, drones were used in the McMurdo Dry Valleys by a team of scientists from Auckland University of Technology (AUT) to create baseline maps of the vegetation.