Spanish Antarctic Station “Gabriel de Castilla”
Address
Deception Island, South Shetland Islands.Operated by the Comité Polar Español (Spain Polar Committee).
Station manager
Antonio Quesada and Constantino FernandezStation Features
Opening year: 1998 Status: OpenFacilities
Station name and owner
The Spanish Antarctic Station “Gabriel de Castilla” is owned and operated by the Comité Polar Español.
Location
The station is located on Deception Island, South Shetland Islands. It is a summer station opened, normally, from November to March.
Climate data
Grey colours are WMO Climate Normals including maximum and minimum values. Blue colours are individual years.
Climate data for the stations where extracted via Copernicus Climate Data Store, from the global gridded reanalysis product:
ERA5 monthly averaged data on single levels from 1940 to present.
Description and source code: Roemer J.K. 2023. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10214922
Data Source: Hersbach et al. 2023. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS), https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.f17050d7
Biodiversity and natural environment
The area is located in an active volcano, and there is a unique community of organisms adapted to the geothermal activity. It is remarkably rich in criptogamic communities. There are several penguin rookeries. Over 57% of the island is covered by permanent glaciers. A ring of hills runs around the island and is the principal drainage divide, ephemeral springs flow toward the inner and outer coast. Several lakes are located on the interior side of the watershed. Kroner Lake is the only geothermal lagoon in the Antarctic.
History and facilities
The area has had a long history of human activity since about 1820, including exploration, sealing, whaling, aviation and scientific research. Deception Island is one of the few places in the world where vessels can sail directly into the centre of a restless volcanic caldera, providing the opportunity for visitors to learn about volcanoes and other aspects of the natural world, as well as early Antarctic exploration, whaling and science. Deception Island is also one of the most frequently visited sites in Antarctica by tourists. The island is an Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA 4), with two Antarctic Specially Protected Areas ASPA140 and ASPA145. The station Gabriel de Castilla was set up as refuge in 1990 mainly to support the scientific research carried out by Spain in Deception Island. The interest in the natural values of the island was increasing among the scientific community and, at the same time, the requests to develop research projects with the support of Gabriel de Castilla refuge. Due to the improvement of its capabilities, in 1998 Gabriel de Castilla was designated formally as a station. Nowadays, the station Gabriel de Castilla provides a very good living and working conditions with livingroom with kitchen and bakery. There are also seven sleeping room with four beds each and one laundry room. A scientist semi-permanent building with two offices, two labs, one environment issues lab (equipped) and a bathroom. Other facilities include a ribbon boat store container, nautical equipment store container, two materials of facilities container, wet lab container, health container (infirmary container), workshop building, three building igloos, logistic stores containers, freezer container, incinerator and communications area.
General research and databases
Databases on volcanism, seismology, marine biology, limnology, permafrost and meteorology are maintained. Research on coastal biology, pollution, human impact, invasive species.
