Bloodfalls Subglacial Release Geochemistry Summary: The chemistry of Blood Falls was first sampled by Hamilton et al. in 1958 and again by Black et al. in 1962 (Hamilton et al., 1962 and Black et al., 1965). However, in these studies, the researchers sampled the salt precipitates, or the salt cone that formed around the terminus of the Taylor Glacier, they did not sample true, unaltered outflow. Keys (1979) collected the first detailed chemical data in 1978 on what he described as a discharge of saline icing at Blood Falls.†Since the inception of the McMurdo LTER in 1992, flow from Blood Falls has been sampled routinely, providing over a decade of chemical data (data available in this site). It is clear from these geochemical data that the source water of Blood Falls is marine in origin (Lyons et al., 1998, 1999) and that the release of ancient subglacial fluid is episodic in nature resulting in complex and dynamic chemistry of waters sampled at Blood Falls (Lyons et al., 2005).