Life at the Extremes

CU researchers are studying a rare place in Antarctica that supports life—barely. The McMurdo Dry Valleys are almost too dry and too cold for anything to survive. Only tiny organisms and simple ecosystems can get by. Life is so basic that it’s easy to see the results of changing conditions.

In this stark place, scientists may get a clear view into the planet’s future. A warming climate will make it wetter here, so researchers are testing how living things will react to more water. What they learn could provide clues about climate change in places that are more complex and harder to study.

^{Header photo: Coats Land Antarctic Plateau. (David Tipling / Minden Pictures)}

70% of our planet's freshwater sits frozen on top of this continent.
_{Antarctic Peninsula seen from the Gerlache Strait. (Zee Evans / NSF)}

54 nations have agreed to share the continent.
No military activity, only science and tourism.
_{Flags of the Antarctic Treaty nations around the South Pole. (Galen Rowell / Mountain Light)}

Human beings didn’t lay eyes on Antarctica until 1820.
Then it took another ninety years for someone to reach the South Pole.
_{‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ in the Antarctic depiction of Ross expedition. (J. W. Carmichael, 1847)}

Most of Antarctica has nothing living in it.
Not algae, not bacteria, nothing. Of all Earth’s continents, it’s the coldest, driest, highest, and windiest.
_{Coats Land Antarctic Plateau. (David Tipling / Minden Pictures)}

Months go by without a sunrise or sunset.
The South Pole has six straight months of daylight or darkness.
_{Southern lights over Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. (Patrick Cullis / NSF)}

Only 2% of Antarctica is not covered in ice.
These are the only inland places where anything lives—and there are some crazy things happening there!
_{Don Juan Pond in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. (Colin Harris / Era Images)}

There’s an entire mountain range buried under ice.
It’s about 750 miles long and the highest peaks rise nearly 15,000' above sea level, but the ice sheet completely covers it.
_{GPR image of the Gamburtsev Mountains buried under ice. (Lamont-Doherty / NSF)}

Antarctica has no permanent human population.
Our species only visits there. babyֱ��app 4,000 people stay there during summer; that number falls to 1,000 during winter.
_{McMurdo, the main U.S. research station, located in the Dry Valleys. (Andrew Smith / NSF)}

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