Scientists from New Zealand and the US have discovered new information revealing how climate change is affecting one of the most extreme and unique ecosystems on Earth, Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys.
The team has found the ice covering the lakes in the area is rapidly thinning, with a knock-on effect for the ancient tower-like microbes that live in them.
Professor Ian Hawes from Waikato University has been analysing the microbes at Lake Fryxell, and says as the ice thins more light is getting through, exposing them to photosynthesis.
"The productivity of the microbial systems is increasing and systems are getting bigger," Hawes says.
The result is more carbon creating bubbles and pushing the microbes to the surface, where they release that carbon into the atmosphere.
"The carbon that is produced in the lakes is getting blown onto the shore and around the valley, so the soils are getting replenished with organic carbon from the lake itself, which is an unusual situation."
More carbon in the Dry Valleys, which is one of the driest places in the world, could create better conditions for new life to form in what has traditionally been an inhospitable polar desert.
"Our projection is as the climate continues to warm, we are going to end up in a situation where the ice cover becomes unstable and starts to break up and the next generation of people will be looking at lakes with open water."
The loss of this environment as it currently is would mean the microbes, unaffected by larger organisms for billions of years in some cases, would not be able to thrive.
That would limit scientific research into the past, and the possibility of alien life on other planets.
"These types of structures, we have seen them on earth before in the fossil record only. These lakes are often used as an analogue to understand how early microbial life on earth really started to form," Hawes says.
"Also, it is considered by many people to represent what we most likely might see on any other planet if we ever get the chance to go there."
Professor Dawn Sumner from the University of California, Davis, agrees the next generation will see a very different Dry Valleys to the one we see now.
"We can say a few things are likely. As the ice gets thinner, more sunlight gets through the ice and there is more photosynthesis and that can change the rate at which the communities grow."
Microbe samples taken from Lake Fryxell are now back in New Zealand being analysed further, with the results due back next year.
"With climate change, the communities and the ecosystems will change significantly, with loss of ice and more photosynthesis," Sumner says.
"So it is very important to be studying these lakes now so that we can get a glimpse into how these ecosystems work before they might be gone."
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