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When biologist Alison Haynes set out to research moss beds in maritime Antarctica, she had little idea she'd be witnessing species adapting and ice caps "pouring water like a tap".
Key points:
- Moss, a type of bryophyte, has inhabited the Antarctic for more than 450 million years
- The moss on King George Island is adapting to changes in the environment
- The island is populated with seals, penguins, bryophytes and international scientists
Until recently, Ms Haynes, a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong, had been conducting local experiments into the roles urban moss played in the environment.
That was before a Brazilian research group, led by Professor Marcio Francelino at the Federal University of Viçosa, came calling.
"They are mainly soil scientists and are keen to build collaborations to extend their work," Ms Haynes said.
"My PhD supervisor asked me if I wanted to go — I said yes immediately."
The project paid Ms Haynes's expenses, including flights, enabling her to travel to Antarctica to work with a team of international scientists.
King George Island
After arriving in Punta Arenas via Santiago, she boarded a military plane to a Chilean base on King George Island, from where it was a Zodiac boat trip to set up camp on Demay Point.
"They regard where I went as being even more remote than the Moon, because it is such an exercise to get there. It was phenomenal to be part of it," Ms Haynes said.
"I think the coldest it got was about -5C, but then you have to add wind chill. The wind is extraordinary in Antarctica and it can get very strong."
King George Island is the largest of the South Shetland Islands, lying 120 kilometres off the coast of Antarctica.
More than 90 per cent of its surface is permanently glaciated, leaving the coastal areas to vegetation and animal life including seals, penguins, birds and roughly 100 species of bryophytes.
Because of global warming, glacial ice, the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth, is melting before researchers' eyes.
"I did actually stand next to glaciers that were melting and you could see the drips coming down, in some cases pouring water like a tap," Ms Haynes said.
The earliest plants
Bryophytes consist of about 20,000 plant species and absorb nutrients from the environment and photosynthesise to create the sugars required for energy.
Like all plants, moss needs water to survive, and water in the Antarctic is only available when snow and ice melt.
The Amazing Antarctic Moss, an article attributed in part to Dr Melinda Waterman, discusses the conditions in which these non-vascular plants live.
"The number of days of melt vary. This means the moss has to deal with very dry conditions," Dr Waterman wrote.
"To cope, it has the ability to desiccate — nearly completely dry out — and then rehydrate when water becomes available."
Ms Haynes added: "You'll find moss that likes the wet, moss that prefers dry areas, and it depends on that as to which species you'll see in different spots."
On her visit to King George Island, Ms Haynes was able to see changes taking place in the moss beds.
"Some of the moss beds, you can see they are changing over the species.
"The environment would have been suitable for one kind of moss that perhaps liked a dry area, but now it's getting wetter.
"You can actually see some species dying and other ones taking over as the spores come down and start to colonise particular areas."
Unlocking secrets about climate change
The soil scientists from Brazil were looking at how carbon sinks and emissions operated in the Antarctic.
"For instance, they put up some equipment trying to measure what's happening with carbon, say, a grass area compared to some bare soil compared to some moss," Ms Haynes said.
"As glaciers retreat, as the rocks are colonised, what's going to happen to carbon emissions?"
Part of the study was to understand the moss that grew there.
"We were trying to establish how old the moss is, when did the glaciers retreat — is it hundreds of years old or more," Ms Haynes said.
Topics: biology, plants, biological-diversity, climate-change, science-and-technology, environment, environmental-impact, human-interest, antarctica, australia, university-of-wollongong-2522, wollongong-2500
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