Carbon cycling on glaciers has received a lot of attention over the past decade because it impacts glacier albedo and therefore melt rates, as well as regional atmospheric carbon concentrations. Atmospheric carbon concentrations and glacier retreat are known to be tightly coupled at a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. This article will concentrate … Continue reading Nutrient Cycling on Glaciers 2: Carbon
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Microbes on Ice: Climate Amplifiers?
I recently published an introduction to glacier microbiology on the climate-science website Climatica: Here's a link... http://climatica.org.uk/microbes-ice-climate-amplifiers For anyone interested in climate science and wanting an introduction to a wealth of relevant articles and links, Climatica is a great resource well worth having a thorough browse! For more information, the reference list below includes some … Continue reading Microbes on Ice: Climate Amplifiers?
Glacier retreat and Meta-communities
Cryoconite has been studied intensively, but we have only touched upon the redeposition of incumbent microbes to other glacial zones - something we expect to happen more as the climate continues to warm. Whether microbes that fix and respire carbon on glacier surfaces continue to do so when they are washed elsewhere has been pondered but … Continue reading Glacier retreat and Meta-communities
Nutrient Cycling on Glaciers 1: Nitrogen
Nutrient cycling has been a central theme of glacier microbiology in the twenty-first century. Here is a run-down of the fundamentals, focussing on the major ones: nitrogen and carbon. Nitrogen's up first... The Nitrogen Cycle: Nitrogen is a key nutrient required for synthesising crucial organic molecules such as nucleotides, proteins, and chlorophyll. Nitrogen availability also … Continue reading Nutrient Cycling on Glaciers 1: Nitrogen
Reconstructing Past Glaciers: Guest Article by Dr Bethan Davies
Many thanks to Dr Bethan Davies from Aberystwyth University for contributing this excellent article to To The Poles. Not only is Bethan a prolific and ingenious palaeoglaciologist, she also manages Antarcticglaciers.org, a key resource for anyone wishing to learn about glaciology from the fundamentals right up to the cutting edge. NB. This article about palaeo-glacier … Continue reading Reconstructing Past Glaciers: Guest Article by Dr Bethan Davies
Cryoconite Ecology: there’s something in the water…
Cryoconite holes represent the most active and biodiverse habitats in the supraglacial (ice surface) environment. Within cryoconite holes the majority of microbial life is concentrated in and around spheroidal granules of 1-10mm diameter, composed of mineral and organic matter, known as cryoconite. However, overlying cryoconite is almost always a column of meltwater centimetres to tens … Continue reading Cryoconite Ecology: there’s something in the water…
Climate amplifiers – ‘these go to eleven’
Physical Geography of the Human Realm students: this post provides additional notes to accompany the 'Cryosphere' lecture on Friday 8th November! Ice and Climate Ice ages and glacial interglacial cycles are periodic fluctuations in earth's ice cover over geologic time. An ice age is a period during which perennial ice is present on earth's surface. … Continue reading Climate amplifiers – ‘these go to eleven’
The old boys: ahead of the curve!
In the past decade or so, interest in glacier microbiology and "bioalbedo" has intensified, but it is important to remember that these ideas are not new. In fact, the early polar explorers wrote on these topics over 150 years ago and even identified species of algae in cryoconite and the role of ice algae for … Continue reading The old boys: ahead of the curve!
Glacier carbon fluxes on Antarcticglaciers.org
I wrote an article about carbon on glacier ice for Antarcticglaciers.org which went online today. I'm really happy to have contributed to this great website! Check it out here. For any of my students who read this - explore the Antarcticglaciers website, it is a great resource for cryosphere information to supplement the lecture material!
Ice Core Review
The aim of this post is not just general interest, but specifically to provide an informal overview of ice cores for my Earth Surface Processes and Environments students (if you are one of them, the material here complements the lecture on Tuesday 15th October. Further notes and the lecture slides are available on Udo). Ice … Continue reading Ice Core Review
To The Poles 