Final Uni in the Brewery: climate change may lead to loss of moss in Antarctica
21 Oct 2008 | Kate McIlwain
The slow life of Antarctic moss that grows only 1.6 millimetres each year provides a window into the effects climate change. Increasing winds, the Antarctic ozone hole and warmer temperatures caused by climate change may eventually lead to the loss of one of Antarctica’s only unique plants.
Professor Sharon Robinson – Director of UOW’s Institute for Conservation Biology – will give the final Uni in the Brewery lecture for 2008. Her talk is titled, Climate Change makes life tougher for Antarctic Plants.
Professor Robinson has been studying mosses, including Schistidium antarctici which is unique to the continent, that grow in harsh subzero conditions around the Casey Station in Antarctica.
She has visited the freezing continent five times over the past ten years, and although the moss grows at a literally glacial pace, she has observed significant changes in a relatively short time.
Professor Robinson and her team have been working with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to discover how moss grows in the nine month Antarctic winter of -20°C temperatures during winter, and a three-month thaw in summer where the temperature is barely above zero.
With ANSTO, the team has been measuring the amount of radioactive carbon - released by nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s – in the moss to date six centimetre long shoots of moss. The carbon signature showed that the base of the shoots was growing before atmospheric testing started, meaning that the mosses were more than 50 years old.
Dating also showed that in good years, the mosses grew at a rate of 1.6mm, and in tough years this dropped to 0.5mm per year.
“You might think that with this type of environment the moss would welcome a bit of climate change but unfortunately it seems to be making things worse,” Professor Robinson said.
Although growth rates for the plants are fastest in warmer years, increasing winds caused by climate change mean that the moss is drying out and more resilient lichens are taking over.
The Antarctic ozone hole is also having an effect as it has led to ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation in the Antarctic spring since the 1970s, and seems to have reduced moss growth rates.
“Although the region of Antarctica where we are working has not yet shown the rapid warming found in the Arctic and on the Antarctic Peninsula, climate change is having a significant effect,” Professor Robinson said.
Uni in the Brewery: Climate Change makes life tougher for Antarctic Plants
When: Wednesday 22nd October (5:30pm - 6:30pm)
Where: Five Islands Brewery in Wollongong
All welcome.
For more information, and RSVPs, contact Vicky Wallace on (02) 4221 4126 or at vwallace@uow.edu.au
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