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Climate Change Manipulations Show Antarctic Flora Is More Strongly Affected By Elevated Nutrients Than Water, J. Wasley, Sharon A. Robinson, C. E. Lovelock, M. Popp

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Climate change is expected to affect the high latitudes first and most severely, rendering Antarctica one of the most significant baseline environments for the study of global climate change. The indirect effects of climate warming, including changes to the availability of key environmental resources, such as water and nutrients, are likely to have a greater impact upon continental Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems than the effects of fluctuations in temperature alone. To investigate the likely impacts of a wetter climate on Antarctic terrestrial communities a multi-season, manipulative field experiment was conducted in the floristically important Windmill Islands region of East Antarctica. Four …