They also want to better understand the algae’s life cycle and physiology.

Gray and Davey say their future research goals include incorporating red algal blooms and, eventually, extending their mapping across the whole of Antarctica.

(The study notes that the green blooms detected by satellite may include some red and orange cells, but its findings are based on readings of chlorophyll, a green pigment, and assumes the blooms were predominantly green species.) “But you also get green species turning red in the same way you get trees turning red in the autumn.” “There are red species and green species,” he says. Red and orange algae were excluded from the study because they have pigments that can interfere with the satellite, says Gray, a researcher at the University of Cambridge and the NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility in Edinburgh. “It’s great data for us because we can’t be everywhere,” says Davey, who recently started a new position at the Scottish Association of Marine Science in Oban. The researchers also invited citizen scientists to send photographs of algal blooms taken over several summers. The recent study looked only at green algae, but researchers hope to incorporate red algal blooms too, in an effort to better understand the algae’s life cycle and dynamics within the Antarctic ecosystem. Information from the satellite, which measures specific wavelengths of light reflected off the Antarctic surface, could be hampered by cloud cover and false signals that could be misread as green algae, says Andrew Gray, the paper’s lead author. To achieve greater accuracy in their results, the scientists supplemented data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 2 satellite with measurements from the field.

They also thrive near penguin colonies, bird nesting sites, and seal hangouts, as animal poop offers nourishing nitrogen and phosphate for the blooms. The green algae included in the study favor wet, slushy snow because the microorganisms need liquid water to reproduce, says Davey. Photosynthetic life on Antarctica also includes those mosses, lichens, and two flowering plants (Antarctic hair grass and Antarctic pearlwort), which contribute further to the total carbon uptake.Īlgae communities tend to be relatively abundant along the coastline of the Antarctic Peninsula during the austral summer months of December through February, when the average temperature is just above freezing. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist.

Ocean Snow by Doug Johnson