The types and distributions of anthropogenic rubbish have been documented at Bunger Hills, East Antarctica. The area has been the site of scientific research stations from 1958 to the present. Rubbish types include deliberately or negligently discarded items (gas cylinders, broken glass), abandoned unserviceable equipment (boats, vehicles, scientific equipment), spills (chemicals, fuel, oil) and the slow collapse of old buildings. Some rubbish remained where it was left, while other material was redistributed by strong winds. Modern expeditioner training should limit the production of new rubbish, while inadvertent wind dispersal of rubbish from old station buildings could be minimized by better management of these structures and their surrounds. Buildings and other constructed items need ongoing maintenance if they are not to break down and be distributed by wind, or they should be removed within a reasonable period.

Correlation of Rodinian and Gondwanan crustal domains relies on a thorough knowledge of those vestiges preserved today. The Bunger Hills hold a critical place in East Antarctica, recording the Mesoproterozoic assembly of Australo-Antarctica in Rodinia and the Neoproterozoic–Cambrian amalgamation of Indo- and Australo-Antarctica in Gondwana. It is situated in a region of disputed overlap between the different components of Rodinia and Gondwana, where there is little consensus on the location of sutures in this region and thus often speculative geological interpretations. The Bunger Hills therefore provide an opportunity to better understand the tectonic setting and palaeogeography during the assembly of these supercontinents. Recent work has confirmed that the Bunger Hills are one of few rare outcrops in Wilkes Land, East Antarctica that can be directly correlated with the broader Musgrave–Albany–Fraser–Wilkes Orogen (MAFWO). Whilst other constituent terranes of the MAFWO have been intensely studied, our geological knowledge of the Bunger Hills was comparatively limited until recently. In light of recent geological and geophysical developments, this contribution serves as an updated and concise standalone reference for the present state of knowledge of the Neoarchean–Cambrian evolution of the Bunger Hills region.

Unglaciated coastal areas in East Antarctica provide records of past ice sheet and glacier fluctuations and subsequent environmental conditions. In this paper we review lithological, geochemical, diatom and radiocarbon data from sediment records from inland and epishelf lakes in Bunger Hills, East Antarctica. While some hilltops were unglaciated during the Last Glacial Maximum, till deposits in lake basins indicate infilling by glacier ice prior to the Holocene. Proglacial sedimentation occurred in lakes during the early Holocene. Around 9.6 ka bp, deposition of marine sapropel started under relatively warm climate conditions. Inland lakes were affected by high clastic input from meltwater runoff until c. 7.9 ka bp, when deposition became highly organic and biogenic proxies indicate a period of cooler conditions. Epishelf lakes experienced a decrease in water exchange with the ocean and increased freshwater input around 7.7 ± 0.2 ka bp and after 2.2 ka bp. This probably resulted from grounding line advances of the bounding glaciers, which could be either controlled by relative sea level (RSL) lowering and/or climate-driven glacier dynamics. The absence of marine sediments in the postglacial record of Algae Lake indicates that Holocene RSL probably reached a maximum at or below 10 m above present sea level.

The directions of strong winds are important for the distribution of marine salt spray, rock weathering, lake chemistry and the distribution of vegetation in Bunger Hills, a coastal ice-free oasis in East Antarctica. Present-day strong winds (> 10 m s−1) dominantly blow from 118 ± 21 degrees true (°T; ± 1 SD). Orientated tafoni (weathering pits) might form in bedrock surfaces by salt and ice crystallization, thermal stress and saltating sand particles, recording the orientation of a strongly directional wind field since the last deglaciation, which commenced > 30 000 years ago. The orientations of these tafoni, at 101 ± 18°T for 686 measurements at 28 sites, are indistinguishable from the direction of modern-day strong winds (> 10 m s−1), indicating that the orientation of the slope of the ice sheet has been stable throughout the last 10 000 years during the Holocene.

Terrestrial environments at Bunger Hills, East Antarctica, vary from vegetation-rich, little-weathered rock surfaces retaining glacial polish and striations near the glacier and ice-sheet margins to salty, vegetation-poor, extensively weathered regions near to and downwind of marine bays and inlets. Weathering forms include tafoni and orientated pits, which record former wind directions. Although salts are found all over Bunger Hills, the strongly weathered area is coincident with the distribution of halite (NaCl) and thenardite (Na2SO4), both of which are derived from seawater and marine salt spray. Salts elsewhere in Bunger Hills are either subglacial calcium carbonates or rock weathering products including gypsum (CaSO4⋅2H2O) and a range of rarer minerals. These other salt minerals do not weather rocks and sediment. The distribution of halite and thenardite acts as a major control on the geomorphology, sediment geochemistry and biogeography of Bunger Hills.

In this paper, we synthesize recorded observations of moss, lichen and bird species in Bunger Hills, East Antarctica, and assess the role of environmental controls, including sediment, salinity, moisture and geology, on species' distributions. The distribution of snow petrels (Pagodroma nivea) appears to be associated with geology; they nest by preference in crevices in bedrock outcrops around the margins of the hills or wherever jointed cliffs are found. South polar skuas (Catharacta maccormicki) are seen throughout Bunger Hills, where they nest and prey on snow petrels. Mosses and lichens were most abundant around the ice margins where fresh snow and ice meltwater are abundant. In the central area of Bunger Hills, where the highest salt concentration in sediments is found and exposure to abrasion by wind-driven mineral sand grains and ice particles is greatest, mosses and lichens are reduced in abundance and diversity. Exposure of parts of Bunger Hills from the ice sheet throughout the Last Glacial Maximum, c. 20 ka bp, means that some land and lakes could have acted as regional refugia and as a locus of recolonization of other ice-free areas.