A tiny seed is stuck between loose gravel and coarse sand. There is nothing alive around it. It only sees a wall of ice that rises 20 meters into the sky. It is cold. Survival is hard here. In winter it is dark even during the day. In summer the sun burns the ground hard and dry 24 hours a day.
The seed was left here several years ago by tourists who came to see the wonders of the last remaining wilderness on planet Earth: Antarctica.
Life is changing. Higher temperatures are melting glaciers and the meltwater is making seeds grow. Antarctica is experiencing one of the fastest climate changes in the world. The melting ice could cause up to 5 meter rise in sea levelWhere the ice disappears, it leaves behind barren soil. By the end of this century, a small country could emerge from under the ice.
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New land in Antarctica is colonized by pioneer organisms. The first to appear are algae and cyanobacteria – tiny organisms so small that they can fit between grains of sand. Here, protected from the burning rays of the sun, the algae live and die and, as usual, slowly stick the grains of sand together, so that a Surface on which other organisms can grow.
Lichens and mosses follow. They are only a few centimetres tall, but they look like giants compared to other life on the coasts of Antarctica. Once lichens and mosses have established themselves, even larger organisms can appear and eventually plants take over. Their seeds multiply and grow when they are stuck in a soft and moist cushion of moss.
Only two species of plants are native to Antarctica. Both spread their seeds through the wind. This makes them independent of animals and insects, which are not needed to carry pollen or seeds to another flower or fresh patch of soil. The wind simply blows them there. All these plants need is a bit of moss or lichen to cling to so they don’t get blown out into the cold desert of snow and ice.
But this natural sequence of plant settlement was interrupted because the Climate change and conditions are becoming more habitable. More than 100 plant species have invaded Antarctica already. The newcomers are doing well. For example, the fast-growing opportunistic Annual plantthe common lawn grass, has spread rapidly across the sub-Antarctic islands from South Georgia to Livingston Island and is now moving south to the Antarctic Peninsula.
Researchers are wondering how much potential there is for new plant species to thrive in Antarctic soils. What will Antarctica look like in 100 years? Could it be as green as the tundra landscapes we know from the Arctic?
A new map
I am part of a group of scientists who have just combined satellite data with field measurements to first map of green vegetation across the entire Antarctic continent.
In total, we discovered 44.2 km² of vegetation, mainly located on the Antarctic Peninsula and the offshore islands. This vegetation area represents only 0.12% of the total ice-free area of Antarctica, which shows that Antarctica is still the frozen continent dominated by snow and ice. For now.
A pristine Antarctic environment is worth protecting for its own good, but it also serves humanity. Climate and weather patterns around the world are determined by the huge ice masses on the Antarctic continent. Their disappearance would change our planet as we know it.
My colleague Charlotte Walshaw at the University of Edinburgh was the lead scientist on the recent research mapping vegetation in Antarctica. She points out that these new maps provide important information on a scale that was not previously possible. “We can use these maps,” she told me, “to keep a very close eye on any large-scale changes in vegetation distribution patterns.”
Antarctica’s vegetation faces some of the harshest living conditions on Earth. Only the most resilient organisms can thrive there, and we don’t yet know what their future holds in the face of climate change. Now that we know where to look for these plants, we can take more targeted conservation measures to secure their future.
This edited article was republished by The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the Original article.
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