| Summary: | Antarctica is the last pristine environment on Earth, its biota being adapted to the harsh and extreme polar climate. Until now, soil formation and vegetation development in continental Antarctica were considered very slow due to the extreme conditions of this polar desert. Since the austral summer 2002/2003, a long-term monitoring network of the terrestrial ecosystems (soils, vegetation, active layer thickness) has been established at Victoria Land (VL) across a > 500 km latitudinal gradient of coastal sites (73◦–77◦S). In only one decade large ecosystem changes were detected. Climate was characterized by a significant increase of thawing degree days in northern VL and of autumn air temperature. No extreme climatic events (such as hot spells) where detected in the study period. Soil chemistry suffered large quantitative changes, clearly indicating rapid pedogenetic processes. In most soils the upper layers exhibited a strong alkalinization (pH increases up to 3 units) and increases in conductivity, anions and cations (in particular of SO4 and Na). The largest changes were observed in soils with low vegetation cover. Statistically significant differences in soil chemistry were detected between soils with high and low vegetation cover, the former showing lower pH, conductivity, Na and Cl. Most plots exhibited changes of total cover, species richness and floristic composition, with vegetation expansion in soils with low vegetation cover and the largest increase recorded at Apostrophe Island (northern VL). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) identified the main trend of vegetation change, with a shift from lower to higher cover and a secondary trend of change associated with a gradient of water availability, consistent with an increase in water instead of snow. Redundancy analysis (RDA) identified the trend of change in soil chemistry with increases in pH, conductivity, anions and cations associated with the concomitant decrease in C, N, NO3, PO4. The RDA confirmed that soil changes were associated with a ...
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