Emerging biological archives can reveal ecological and climatic change in Antarctica

Jan M Strugnell; Helen V McGregor; Nerida G Wilson; Karina T Meredith; Steven L Chown; Sally C Y Lau; Sharon A Robinson; Krystyna M Saunders

doi:10.1111/gcb.16356

Emerging biological archives can reveal ecological and climatic change in Antarctica

Glob Chang Biol. 2022 Nov;28(22):6483-6508. doi: 10.1111/gcb.16356. Epub 2022 Sep 8.

Authors

Jan M Strugnell^{1

2}, Helen V McGregor³, Nerida G Wilson^{4

5

6}, Karina T Meredith⁷, Steven L Chown⁸, Sally C Y Lau^{1

2}, Sharon A Robinson³, Krystyna M Saunders^{3

7

9}

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
² Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
³ Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.
⁴ Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, Western Australian Museum, Western Australia, Australia.
⁵ Research and Collections, Western Australian Museum, Western Australia, Australia.
⁶ School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia.
⁷ Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Lucas Heights, New South Wales, Australia.
⁸ Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
⁹ Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is causing observable changes in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean including increased air and ocean temperatures, glacial melt leading to sea-level rise and a reduction in salinity, and changes to freshwater water availability on land. These changes impact local Antarctic ecosystems and the Earth's climate system. The Antarctic has experienced significant past environmental change, including cycles of glaciation over the Quaternary Period (the past ~2.6 million years). Understanding Antarctica's paleoecosystems, and the corresponding paleoenvironments and climates that have shaped them, provides insight into present day ecosystem change, and importantly, helps constrain model projections of future change. Biological archives such as extant moss beds and peat profiles, biological proxies in lake and marine sediments, vertebrate animal colonies, and extant terrestrial and benthic marine invertebrates, complement other Antarctic paleoclimate archives by recording the nature and rate of past ecological change, the paleoenvironmental drivers of that change, and constrain current ecosystem and climate models. These archives provide invaluable information about terrestrial ice-free areas, a key location for Antarctic biodiversity, and the continental margin which is important for understanding ice sheet dynamics. Recent significant advances in analytical techniques (e.g., genomics, biogeochemical analyses) have led to new applications and greater power in elucidating the environmental records contained within biological archives. Paleoecological and paleoclimate discoveries derived from biological archives, and integration with existing data from other paleoclimate data sources, will significantly expand our understanding of past, present, and future ecological change, alongside climate change, in a unique, globally significant region.

Keywords: Southern Ocean; benthos; coalescent inference; lake sediments; mosses; paleoecology; peat; sclerochronology; stable isotopes; terrestrial invertebrate.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Animals
Antarctic Regions
Climate Change*
Ecosystem*
Soil
Water

Substances

Soil
Water