Antarctica

Impact of climate change on Antarctic ice algae photosynthesis


During Voyage 1 2003, UTS become the 19th Australian University to contribute to the Antarctic research program. We are establishing a new research program based on understanding the impact of temperature on the photosynthetic activity of sea ice microalgae. This has numerous parallels with our coral bleaching research, in that we are looking at the impact of temperature on photosynthesis of microalgae growing at an environmental extreme. The main research activity over the next 3 years will be associated with our ARC Discovery project “Effect of global change on the primary productivity of Antarctic coastal ecosystems” (Chief Investigators; McMinn and Ralph). This project involves assessment of changes in productivity of coastal aquatic plant systems, due to climate change. Current research projects include: brine algae photophysiology; where we are looking at photosynthetic limitations to algae growing at 80 ppt salinity and -10^oC. impact of melting ice cores to collect sea ice microalgae; this is a common practice to collect sea ice algae, however the process of melting the algae out of the ice, inevitably causes some osmotic shock which appears to effect species within the community differently. photokinetics of bottom ice algae; we are looking at the capacity of bottom ice algae to acclimate to different light regimes.