ANTARCTICA COMPLETED MAPPING ALL THEIR PLANT LIFE SHOWING INCREASE IN VEGETATION AMID CLIMATE CHANGE

Most people's first impressions of Antarctica are probably of vast stretches of desolate ice with very little colour beyond the snowy white visible in the distance. But there are also plants on the continent, even though ice is undoubtedly present there. This type of vegetation uses photosynthesis to generate food from sunlight to survive. However, because a large portion of Antarctica is inaccessible and little visited, little is known about the extent of plant life there until recently. For the first time, a new study that was published in Nature Geoscience maps and quantifies the plant life throughout the continent using satellite imagery.

Three groups of plants comprise the majority of the plant life in Antarctica: algae, lichen, and moss. These plants aid in the soil's nutrient processing and take up carbon from the atmosphere. Monitoring their distribution across the continent is essential for evaluating conservation initiatives and monitoring the consequences of climate change. Three groups of plants comprise the majority of the plant life in Antarctica: algae, lichen, and moss. These plants aid in the soil's nutrient processing and take up carbon from the atmosphere. Monitoring their distribution across the continent is essential for evaluating conservation initiatives and monitoring the consequences of climate change. 

On their summer excursions, the researchers also measured things on the ground. They estimated that there is roughly 45 square kilometres (17.4 square miles) of photosynthetic life on the continent by combining their observations from the air and the ground. Eighty % of it is found on the Antarctic Peninsula and adjacent islands, not equally distributed.