What Can Antarctica’s Ecosystems Tell Us About Climate Change?
Undergrad Researcher Earns Opportunity of a Lifetime
Few have set foot on the icy Antarctic shores, and fewer have traversed its mountainous, treacherous interior, but Elizabeth Sicard earned an opportunity that even some decorated researchers have not had the chance to experience in their lifetimes.
Sicard, a senior undergraduate natural resource ecology and management major, who’s minoring in geology and geophysics, heard of the opportunity through her professor during a field trip.
“We were playing that road trip game where you ask the people in the car where they would go if they could go anywhere in the world,” she said. “My answer to that question has always been Antarctica. When I said (it), the professor in the car with us said that someone in the department is actually looking for an undergrad to go with them in December.
“Doing things that are out of the ordinary really excite me, like camping for two months in the cold Antarctic or only having very little access to internet or not being able to shower for two weeks. Sounds odd, but those kinds of things really tempt me to apply for positions.”
So Sicard joined up with LSU geology and geophysics professor Peter Doran’s research group and traveled more than 8,600 miles away from home.
Antarctica is incomparable; a vast and remote wilderness shaped by the elements. The frozen continent is still largely untouched by humans and remains the domain of its wildlife.
But over the past 200 years, since its discovery, researchers have flocked there to better understand the mysteries that lay within—and below—the ice. Which is why Sicard—who has been there since the third of December—and the rest of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-term Ecological Research crew have spent months within the Dry Valleys, a row of snow-free valleys—and one of the most extreme deserts in the world.
The valleys have intrigued scientists for decades. While the rest of Antarctica is the picturesque white landscape, the McMurdo Dry Valleys are an anomaly: ice-and-snow free. According to researchers, the landscape is Earth’s closest replication of Mars’ own environment.
But despite what this alien terrain may seem like, the land is not barren of life. Microbes grow in the valleys as the lake levels rise and the soil becomes inundated.
The research team is investigating how the area’s ecosystem reacts to amplified physical connectivity in response to climate change. As Sicard explained, amplified physical connectivity is when all of the ecosystems in an area are united. For example, if the lake levels change and the valley is submerged, then the connectivity between the lakes, the moats, and the soils has been enhanced.
The scientists hypothesize that the increased environmental connectivity within the McMurdo Dry Valley’s ecosystem will amplify the exchange of biota—species, populations and communities—, energy, and matter, therefore regulating the ecosystem’s structure and performance.
This could potentially show how negative impacts to a single element of an ecosystem could affect another. Ecosystems around the world may become less stable if food chains are disrupted and species’ populations decline following dramatic climate events.
There are several teams working on different aspects of this central theory, but Sicard initially began working with the C-511 group, which is studying the meteorology of the continent. The undergraduate assisted with ice ablation and floating boulder surveys, and even assisted in creating dive holes in the ice.
“Ecology is not just about the biology,” she said. “In order to have an ecosystem, you have to have climate and water and substrate, so you have to study everything to understand the biology.”
Elizabeth assisting divers as they prepare to dive and standing next to a dive hole. Credit: Elizabeth Sicard.
After a month, Sicard transitioned to the C-508 group. “As a dive tender, I help the divers get dressed and set up the rack box since they do surface supply diving,” she said. “That means that the diver is connected with an umbilical line to the rack box, where they have a supply of oxygen and a (communication) box, so while the diver is underwater, we can talk to them.”
Sicard said this is especially useful when they collect samples underwater because the divers can tell the researchers at the surface to record information about the sampling conditions or about data collection.
So why study all of these elements?
“It’s important to understand the mechanisms and the effects of climate change,” she said. “Doing any sort of climate research can help further the limited knowledge we have on the subject. It is relevant to everyone, no matter if you are a researcher or not.
“It affects everyone, and even the research our team is doing is affecting those who know nothing about the Antarctic.”