As ice recedes in Antarctica, new microbial research frontier opens
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - 08:40
in Earth & Climate
Warming global temperatures are changing life on every continent on Earth, including Antarctica, where more microbes are moving into territory previously covered by ice. How these microbes respond to warming will offer clues about what future Antarctica will look like and who will thrive there. Microbial ecologist and Ph.D. candidate Alicia Purcell from the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) at NAU recently traveled there with a team from Texas Tech to set up a warming experiment in the path of a retreating glacier near Palmer Station on the western Antarctic peninsula.