site.btaDoctor of Electronics Petar Sapundzhiev: Antarctic Research Is a Piece of the Global Climate Puzzle

Electronics engineer Dr. Petar Sapundzhiev is in Antarctica for the seventh consecutive year to find technological solutions and make inventions that help research tasks. Geologist Stefan Velev connected him with the expedition seven years ago.

Today, we are on top of Mirador Hill, which overlooks one of the most interesting glaciers on Livingston Island, according to scientists - the Huntress Glacier. In 2024, Sapundzhiev installed here an automatic system for permanent filming of the glacier. It accumulates continuous visual data on the glacier's development. This data can be used for analysis with various algorithms and software, and thus detailed information is obtained about how the glacier is melting, how it is moving over time, how it is losing or gaining mass.

The monitoring is part of a long-standing effort by the Bulgarian Antarctic Base to learn more about the fate of glaciers and how they are linked to local and global climate processes.

"These studies are pieces of the global climate puzzle. Everything that happens on our planet is tied into one huge, interwoven ecosystem. Processes that happen in the ocean, tens of thousands of miles away from here, sooner or later affect processes everywhere on the planet. By learning more about what is happening here, locally, we are building the big picture of the processes on our planet," Sapundzhiev explained.

The project with the automatic imaging system on Huntress Glacier is his own initiative, but is a natural extension of decades of research work on glaciers. His project was funded by the America for Bulgaria Foundation.

"Long before me, scientists and researchers have studied glacier processes here using different methods. What I have done is a project that has been going on for the last two years. It is an addition to all that has been done long before I came here," Sapundzhiev said.

The glaciers are being studied with GPS tracking, GPR, and satellite image analysis.

The Bulgarian researcher says several things brought him to Antarctica. These are his love of the mountains, snow and nature, his engineering and research drive to invent devices and equipment to be used for research purposes, and his desire to use his engineering knowledge to unlock the secrets of nature.