Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes
Trapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet lie over 400 subglacial lakes, which are considered to be extreme, isolated, yet viable habitats for microbial life. The physical conditions within subglacial lakes are critical to evaluating how and where life may best exist. Here, we propose that Earth’s geo...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7888925 2023-05-15T13:58:02+02:00 Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes Couston, Louis-Alexandre Siegert, Martin 2021-02-17 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7888925/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33597235 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3972 en eng American Association for the Advancement of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7888925/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33597235 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3972 Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY Sci Adv Research Articles Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3972 2021-02-28T01:30:39Z Trapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet lie over 400 subglacial lakes, which are considered to be extreme, isolated, yet viable habitats for microbial life. The physical conditions within subglacial lakes are critical to evaluating how and where life may best exist. Here, we propose that Earth’s geothermal flux provides efficient stirring of Antarctic subglacial lake water. We demonstrate that most lakes are in a regime of vigorous turbulent vertical convection, enabling suspension of spherical particulates with diameters up to 36 micrometers. Thus, dynamic conditions support efficient mixing of nutrient- and oxygen-enriched meltwater derived from the overlying ice, which is essential for biome support within the water column. We caution that accreted ice analysis cannot always be used as a proxy for water sampling of lakes beneath a thin (<3.166 kilometers) ice cover, because a stable layer isolates the well-mixed bulk water from the ice-water interface where freezing may occur. Text Antarc* Antarctic Ice Sheet PubMed Central (PMC) Antarctic The Antarctic Science Advances 7 8 eabc3972 |
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Research Articles Couston, Louis-Alexandre Siegert, Martin Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes |
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Research Articles |
description |
Trapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet lie over 400 subglacial lakes, which are considered to be extreme, isolated, yet viable habitats for microbial life. The physical conditions within subglacial lakes are critical to evaluating how and where life may best exist. Here, we propose that Earth’s geothermal flux provides efficient stirring of Antarctic subglacial lake water. We demonstrate that most lakes are in a regime of vigorous turbulent vertical convection, enabling suspension of spherical particulates with diameters up to 36 micrometers. Thus, dynamic conditions support efficient mixing of nutrient- and oxygen-enriched meltwater derived from the overlying ice, which is essential for biome support within the water column. We caution that accreted ice analysis cannot always be used as a proxy for water sampling of lakes beneath a thin (<3.166 kilometers) ice cover, because a stable layer isolates the well-mixed bulk water from the ice-water interface where freezing may occur. |
format |
Text |
author |
Couston, Louis-Alexandre Siegert, Martin |
author_facet |
Couston, Louis-Alexandre Siegert, Martin |
author_sort |
Couston, Louis-Alexandre |
title |
Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes |
title_short |
Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes |
title_full |
Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes |
title_fullStr |
Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in Antarctic subglacial lakes |
title_sort |
dynamic flows create potentially habitable conditions in antarctic subglacial lakes |
publisher |
American Association for the Advancement of Science |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7888925/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33597235 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3972 |
geographic |
Antarctic The Antarctic |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic The Antarctic |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Ice Sheet |
op_source |
Sci Adv |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7888925/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33597235 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3972 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3972 |
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Science Advances |
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7 |
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8 |
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