Widespread Biological Response to Rapid Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula ...

• Main Authors: Amesbury, MJ, Roland, TP, Royles, J, Hodgson, DA, Convey, P, Griffiths, H, Charman, DJ
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cell Press 2017
• Subjects: Antarctic Peninsula; moss bank; productivity; recent change; sensitivity; stable isotopes; testate amoebae; Antarctic; Elephant Island; Green Island; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.10282; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/264686

Recent climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula is well documented [1-5], with warming, alongside increases in precipitation, wind strength, and melt season length [1, 6, 7], driving environmental change [8, 9]. However, meteorological records mostly began in the 1950s, and paleoenvironmental datasets that provide a longer-term context to recent climate change are limited in number and often from single sites [7] and/or discontinuous in time [10, 11]. Here we use moss bank cores from a 600-km transect from Green Island (65.3°S) to Elephant Island (61.1°S) as paleoclimate archives sensitive to regional temperature change, moderated by water availability and surface microclimate [12, 13]. Mosses grow slowly, but cold temperatures minimize decomposition, facilitating multi-proxy analysis of preserved peat [14]. Carbon isotope discrimination (Δ(13)C) in cellulose indicates the favorability of conditions for photosynthesis [15]. Testate amoebae are representative heterotrophs in peatlands [16-18], so their ...