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- Vegetation growth accelerates dramatically over years on Antarctica
Vegetation growth accelerates dramatically over years on Antarctica
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A recent study published in Nature Geoscience has found that a significant area of Antarctica, approximately 12 square kilometers, has been colonized by vegetation, including mosses, lichens, liverworts, and associated algae. This "greening" trend is a result of rising temperatures. The study estimates that the "greening" rate has accelerated by 30% since 2016. While a tiny proportion (0.12%) of the continent has turned green, the area is substantial, equivalent to over 1,500 football pitches.
It is clear that bank-forming mosses are expanding their range with warmer and wetter conditions, which is likely facilitating similar expansions for some of the invertebrate communities that rely on them for habitat.
At the same time, some specialist species, such as the more dry-loving mosses and invertebrates, might decline.
Increasingly, we're seeing evidence that non-native insect life is taking hold in Antarctica. And that can dramatically change things as well.
It's one thing for plants to be growing upwards very fast. If they're growing outwards, then you know you're starting to see massive changes and massive increases in vegetation cover across the peninsula.
The plants we find on the Antarctic Peninsula -mostly mosses - grow in perhaps the harshest conditions on Earth.
There are real risks presented by this trend to Antarctica's environmental future.
The landscape is going to be altered partially because the existing vegetation is expanding, but it could also be altered in the future with new vegetation coming in.
In order to protect Antarctica, we must understand these changes and identify precisely what is causing them.
So like Olly says, one of the things we can't rule out is that this really does increase quite dramatically over the next few decades. Our findings raise serious concerns about the environmental future of the Antarctic Peninsula and of the continent as a whole.
That's just creating more and more land for this potentially rapid vegetation response.
We'd taken these sediment cores, and done all sorts of analysis, including radiocarbon dating … showing the growth in the plants we'd sampled increasing dramatically.
It's becoming easier for life to live there.
But with a few new grass seeds here and there, or a few spores, and all of a sudden, you've got a very different ecosystem.
The rate at which it is expanding is astounding.
The sensitivity of the Antarctic Peninsula's vegetation to climate change is now clear and, under future (human-caused) warming, we could see fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this iconic and vulnerable region.
The real significance is about the ecological shift on the exposed land, the land that's ice-free, creating an area suitable for more advanced plant life or invasive species to get a foothold.
Soil in Antarctica is mostly poor or non-existent, but this increase in plant life will add organic matter, and facilitate soil formation -- potentially paving the way for other plants to grow.
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sources
perspectives
organizations
- 1.University of Exeter
- 2.Nature Geoscience
- 3.University of Hertfordshire
- 4.British Antarctic Survey
- 5.Google
- 6.University of Cambridge
- 7.US National Snow and Ice Data Center
- 8.USGS Landsat