The Earth Story

Underneath the Dry Valleys may not be so dry

A recent study led by a researcher from the University of Tennessee revealed that there are interconnected aquifers beneath the glaciers and permafrost. The briny liquid is about 300m under the surface and around twice the salinity of sea water and of course, is well below freezing (though it stays a liquid due to the salinity and pressure).

To map this groundwater, the team used a new instrument called SkyTEM which can generate images of subsurface environments. It does this by measuring the electrical resistivity beneath the frozen ground, and as liquids, especially salty liquids, are more conductive than ice, soil or rock it is possible to differentiate what lies beneath the surface.

If Blood Falls (see previous post:http://on.fb.me/1FJVyeK) is representative of the groundwater discovered in this study, then it is likely that a rather diverse and large living ecosystem is existing below the Dry Valleys! This is particularly important for understanding the ways in which life might survive on Mars, as the Dry Valleys have conditions remarkably similar to those of Mars.

It is well known that sub-glacial water exists throughout the icy continent, but this is the first time subsurface water has been discovered in areas that are not covered by ice.

-MJA

Image credit: VALMAP

Further reading: http://bit.ly/1I206NM

Reference: Mikucki, J. A., Auken, E., Tulaczyk, S., Virginia, R. A., Schamper, C., Sørensen, K. I., ... & Foley, N. (2015). Deep groundwater and potential subsurface habitats beneath an Antarctic dry valley. Nature Communications, 6.[_

_](https://www.facebook.com/TheEarthStory/photos/a.352867368107647/870438003017245/?type=1&theater#)

Sasha: A baby woolly rhino

The gently thawing Siberian permafrost is famous for its finds of well preserved frozen mammoths (seehttp://on.fb.me/1BthhWr andhttp://on.fb.me/1M0z7D2), but in 2014, the Sakha Republic saw the first discovery of a baby woollyl rhino eroding out of a riverbank.  Sasha was named after the hunter who spotted her hair hanging out of the riverbank, spotted the horns sticking out of the jaw and alerted scientists at the Mammoth Fauna Department of the Yakutian Academy of Sciences. The sex of the animal isn’t actually known but the team studying the fossil say the name “Universally applies. Sasha’s age at death is estimated at 7 months making it far larger than modern rhinoceros at the same age, and chemical tests show that it is about 10,000 years old. Work on the frozen hair pigment further showed that Sasha was a “strawberry blonde”.    So far only five specimens of well preserved adult woolly rhinos have been found throughout Europe and northern Asia, though fossil bones are more common. Sasha is the first ever juvenile, which will give researchers insights into their growth process and how it compares with that of their modern cousins. Much less is known about these large furry creatures that shared the ice age landscapes of Europe with our ancestors than their cousins the mammoths, though as the second photo (taken in Chauvet the oldest painted cave in France, dated to 32,000 years ago) reveals, our distant forebears certainly interacted with them.

Loz

Image credit: Academy of Sciences, Republic of Sakha http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0129-meet-sasha-the-worlds-only-baby-woolly-rhino/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/sasha-woolly-rhino-mummy-siberia-ice-age-spd/

Mammoth mummy

kristinreevespark

😁💪from @theboneyardalaska @golddaughters when they’re not digging gold they’re finding fossils with us @theboneyardalaska People sometimes ask why I hashtag  #crossfitgirls . This is @golddaughters @ilauratheexplora who is a level 2 #crossfit trainer at work. The helper that jumps in to help her at the end of the clip is my sister and master Boner @kristinreevespark who is also a level 2 #crossfit trainer. These things are heavy

It's alive! It's ALIVE!

After 30,000 years, a giant virus has been brought back to life from the Siberian permafrost; a layer of permanently frozen soil that rings the Arctic. After isolating the microbe and sequencing its DNA, it was classified to the genus pithovirus; a giant virus group which shares only a third of its genes with any known organisms and only 11 percent of its genes with other viruses.

Before you get images of some sort of invasion of the giant viruses, a few things have to be put into perspective. A ‘Giant Virus’ is very much a relative term, this virus is 1.5 microns in length (.0015mm) and contains 500 genes (HIV contains 12 genes). Secondly, most people aren’t too comfortable with viruses, but have no fear, this virus preys on single celled organisms, which we most certainly are not. However, if you are close to any amoebas, you may want to give them a heads up.

The original sample from the permafrost was taken 30m below the surface of a layer of late Pleistocene sediment. When exposed to amoebas, it was found that the amoebas were dying; hosting a virus.

The resurrection of a microorganism isn’t the most shocking revelation in the world; micro labs would be hellish (even more so :p) if we couldn't revive organisms from the cold, but an aspect of this new discovery forces a foreboding question: “Could climate change uncover more, less friendly, microorganisms?”

In my opinion, probably not, but this discovery has certainly shown that it is not impossible.

-Jean

More info: http://mashable.com/2014/03/03/virus-siberia-permafrost/

Warming leading to crumbling

This image is a satellite photo of a monstrous landslide that occurred in Alaska in 2015. This site is a valley called the Taan Fjord within Glacier Bay National Park, and the glacier you see holding part of the slide volume is called the Tyndall Glacier. No one was in the area to witness this slide, but it’s a good thing there wasn’t, as they probably would have died. This slide was the largest non-volcanic landslide humans have seen in recorded history and it set off a tsunami that stripped trees off of the lower 200 meters of a slope farther down the valley.

This is just one of a large series of slides examined as part of a recent study led by a researcher at the US Geological Survey. Using images from the long-lived Landsat satellite series, a record of Earth’s surface going back nearly 40 years, they picked a few time slices and investigated how many landslides Alaska had seen and how big they were. Their results suggest that the Tyndall Glacier slide probably won’t be the last of these monsters.

Starting in 2012 there has been a dramatic increase of large landslides in this portion of Alaska, with the rate of slides more than doubling that seen any other time in the last 30 years. There are more of these slides, and they are also growing larger.

This surge in landslides is hypothesized to be occurring because the area is warming rapidly. These slides are mostly occurring in the Spring and on slopes that are particularly susceptible to warming due to their exposure to the sun. Furthermore the average temperature in Glacier Bay during the year crossed 0°C in the year 2010, and for areas to stay permanently frozen they obviously need average temperatures below that number.

The scientists hypothesize that the permafrost in this area is breaking down now that it is too warm. As the permafrost melts, the ice that was holding steep slopes together is gone and those slopes are crumbling. The areas that are collapsing first are the ones most prone to rapid warming – the ones that get the most sun in the spring. However, as temperatures continue to rise, these slopes are likely to keep crumbling, and even more will become susceptible to these large slides.

-JBB

Image credit: Digital Globe/Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/detecting-landslides-few-seismic-wiggles

References: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10346-017-0879-7 http://glacierhub.org/2018/07/11/climate-change-behind-more-frequent-powerful-avalanches-in-alaska/ http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/07/02/massive-landslide-detected-in-glacier-bays-fragile-mountains/ https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2016/01/02/tyndall-glacier-landslide-1/

Mercury in Permafrost

Since the last ice age, mercury (Hg) in the atmosphere has bound with organic material and has been buried by sedimentation and frozen in permafrost where it has been trapped for thousands of years. Soils at or below 0°C for two consecutive years is referred to as permafrost soils. In a new study to quantify the amount of mercury trapped in the permafrost soils north of the equator, scientists show that there is twice as much mercury trapped in the permafrost soils than the oceans, atmosphere and other soils combined. To be precise, the permafrost in the northern hemisphere contains 15 million gallons of mercury trapped in them.

Atmospheric sources of mercury in the northern hemisphere include - Hg released during boreal forest fires, atmospheric mixing with the ozone layer during the summer, and volcanic eruptions. From these sources, Hg deposits on the surface of the soil where it bonds with the organic matter. Once this organic matter is buried by sedimentation below the active (soil) layer, the Hg is frozen and locked into the permafrost.

However, due to a recent warming in the Arctic Region, permafrost soils thaw and release the mercury they trapped for thousands of years. The released mercury has the potential to enter waterways and be taken up by micro-organisms who convert it to methylmercury. This form of mercury is a toxin that affects the neurological system resulting in birth defects and motor impairment. Furthermore, mercury can travel up the food chain affecting native communities along with local ecosystems and indigenous communities. The mercury that is released back into the atmosphere has to potential to travel long distances and affect ecosystems and communities miles away from these permafrost soils.

Image – NASA http://bit.ly/2sqWOEW

Sources: http://bit.ly/2G79CTb http://bit.ly/2Cbnoll

This is a climate change/permafrost/disease story. Take a trip to one of the northernmost settlements in the world, Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. They walk you through why it seems to be forbidden to be buried in this area because of the (now starting to melt) permafrost. The scientists interviewed up here discuss how during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic seven minors were buried atop the permafrost and their bodies likely have preserved the flu virus that triggered that epidemic.

Lightning Fires in the Arctic

The Northwest Territories of Canada had a record number of wildfires caused by lightning in 2014. Alaska did as well in 2015. A new study has found that the number of lightning-ignited fires in those areas has increased 2 to 5% per year since 1975, and linked the increase to climate change.

The researchers found that thunderstorms, and the fires they start, have been creeping further north as the climate warms. Warmer temperatures can fuel more thunderstorms, meaning the situation is likely to keep getting worse.

The areas being burned are along the margins where the boreal forest becomes the Arctic tundra. One of the dominant features of the tundra are the gelisol soils – soils which contain permafrost within 2 meters of the soil surface. Gelisols trap large amounts of carbon within the permafrost layers; the fires threaten to release that carbon back into the atmosphere, which in turn could lead to more global warming, which means even more thunderstorms and lightning-induced fires. This is known as a positive feedback loop.

If the fire doesn’t release all the carbon, it could still allow seeds from the boreal forest to plant themselves in the newly exposed minerals in the burnt soil, allowing the forest to creep north and thereby damaging the tundra ecosystem. In short, the northern ecosystem may be drastically altered very quickly.

Photo Credit: Government of Alberta, Canada https://go.nasa.gov/2uG3vjw

References: https://go.nasa.gov/2ubwiM2 http://bit.ly/2tE8Ure

Collapse

This piece of coastal sea cliff is found on Alaska’s North Slope at a location called Drew Point. These blocks are a fascinating combination of changing climate and previously frozen landscape. The soil at this site is held together by Permafrost – it is cold enough that there is a soil layer containing year-round ice just below the surface. However, when that permafrost is exposed to the open ocean, it melts rapidly, allowing the ocean to eat away at the bottommost sediments and removing support for the soil above.

Once the ocean removes the supporting soil at the bottom, the still frozen soil blocks above break off and collapse downward, where they are suddenly exposed to ocean water. The permafrost then melts rapidly, leaving the soil to be rapidly washed away.

Although maps for this location are only available going back to the 1940s, the US Geological Survey is monitoring this coastal retreat. A survey a decade ago found that since the 1940s, the average yearly rate of coastal retreat here has more than doubled, from ~6 meters of retreat per year to 15 meters per year. The survey now has timelapse cameras at this site that monitor the coastal retreat as these blocks break off. Rapid erosion like this elsewhere in the Alaskan Arctic has the potential to threaten both villages and infrastructure for the oil and gas industries.

-JBB

Image credit: USGS https://flic.kr/p/RN3Xer

Read more: https://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/climate-change/hiLat.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaB3nKxPjiU

We are watching you

These features are partially frozen, tundra lakes that are part of the Lena River delta in Siberia. The Lena currently is mostly flowing to the western part of its delta, leaving small lakes as remnants of older channels in the eastern part. Like many Arctic lakes, they swell and contract depending on the availability of water during the seasons, creating the blue and green pattern reminiscent of eyeballs. This image was taken originally by the Landsat satellite system.

-JBB

Image credit: From Above (Landsat images are public domain) https://flic.kr/p/NiBr4P

Clouds rolling off the Vatnajökull Icecap, Iceland

Siberian mammoth goes on display in Japan

This 39,000 year old baby female, named Yuki, was found with blood still in her veins, frozen in the permafrost on a Siberian island. It is the first successful extraction of blood from an extinct animal. A team of Russian and Japanese scientists is hoping to clone one sometime in the future.

Loz

Image credit: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/rare-39-000-year-old-woolly-mammoth-display-japan-article-1.1395453

BACTERIUM FROM THE ARCTIC DISCOVERED GROWING AT –15°C

A team of researchers from the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University have discovered a new bacterium living within the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic. The bacteria are able to thrive at –15ºC, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth. This discovery allows insight into the preconditions for microbial life on both Saturn’s moon Enceladus as well as Mars; both are thought to contain briny subzero conditions. Mars has recorded differing values for its surface temperature with a common value being −55 °C while Enceladus’ surface temperature is around -201°C.

The bacterium, Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 (electron microscope image here: http://bit.ly/10PGWGm), was discovered after the team screened about 200 separate High Arctic microbes, attempting to find the microorganism that was best adapted to the Arctic permafrost. The bacterium is believed to live within the thin veins of briny water within the permafrost on Ellesmere Island. The water, at~-16ºC, is not frozen, as the salt content is so high; this makes the environment habitable. The organism is capable of staying alive to at least -25ºC in the permafrost.

The team studied the genomic sequence and other molecular traits of P. halocryophilus OR1 and discovered the organism has significant modifications in its cell structure and function. The bacterium also contains increased amounts of cold-adapted proteins and the team observed changes to the membranes surrounding the bacterium, which allowed it some protection from the harsh environment it inhabits. P. halocryophilus OR1 is also able to maintain high levels of compounds that act like a molecular antifreeze, which keeps the bacterium from freezing as well as protecting the cell from the briny environment.

These microbes may also play a harmful role in very cold climates like the Arctic through increasing carbon dioxide emissions from the melting permafrost.

-TEL

https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/bacterium-canadian-high-arctic-and-life-mars-226842 http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5498/coldest-growing-bacteria-discovered Image credit: Joel Barker, courtesy of Ohio State University.