Hummocks of moss cover Ardley Island off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Credit: Dan Charman
Topics: Antarctica, Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming
A fast-warming region of Antarctica is getting greener with shocking speed. Satellite imagery of the region reveals that the area covered by plants increased by almost 14 times over 35 years — a trend that will spur rapid change of Antarctic ecosystems.
“It's the beginning of dramatic transformation,” says Olly Bartlett, a remote-sensing specialist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, and an author of the study1, published today in Nature Geoscience, that reports these results.
From white to green
Bartlett and his colleagues analyzed images taken between 1986 and 2021 of the Antarctic Peninsula — a part of the continent that juts north towards the tip of South America. The pictures were taken by the Landsat satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey in March, which is the end of the growing season for vegetation in the Antarctic.
To assess how much of the land was covered with vegetation, the researchers took advantage of the properties of growing plants: healthy plants absorb a lot of red light and reflect a lot of near-infrared light. Scientists can use satellite measurements of light at these wavelengths to determine whether a piece of land is covered by thriving plants.
The team found that the peninsula's area swathed in plants grew from less than one square kilometer in 1986 to nearly 12 square kilometers in 2021 (see ‘An icy land goes green’). The rate of expansion was roughly 33% higher between 2016 and 2021 compared with the four-decade study period as a whole.
Believe it or not, this lush landscape is Antarctica, Alix Soliman, Nature
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