Wed, Oct 05, 2022 page7

• Scientists study climate in Chile’s deep south

  • AFP, PUERTO WILLIAMS, Chile
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  Hidden inside pristine forests in Chile’s deep south, known as the end of the world, lie potential early warning signs of climate change.

  Puerto Williams on Navarino Island, which is separated from the South American mainland by the Beagle Channel, is the world’s southern-most town.

  Far from the pollution that blights major urban and industrial centers, it is a paradise that provides unique conditions to study global warming.

  

  A man holds a child on a boat as it passes the Darwin Mountains during a journey through the Beagle Channel in Chile on Sept. 23.

  Photo: AFP

  “There is nowhere else like it,” said Ricardo Rozzi, director of the Cape Horn International Center for global change studies and biocultural conservation in Puerto Williams.

  It is “a place that is especially sensitive to climate change” as average temperatures do not rise above five degrees Celsius.

  This cold and windy area is the last inhabited southern frontier before reaching Antarctica.

  

  A person uses a magnifying glass to observe the “miniature forests” formed by moss and lichen at the Omora Etnobotanical Park in Puerto Williams, Chile, on Sept. 24.

  Photo: AFP

  The Omora Ethnobotanical Park is home to an immense variety of lichens, mosses and fungi that scientists study by crouching down onto their knees with magnifying glasses.

  In the crystal clear Robalo river, minuscule organisms act as sentinels of the changes produced by global warming.

  In both the park and river, the alarm bells are ringing.

  

  A “miniature forest” formed by moss and lichen grows on a rock at the Omora Etnobotanical Park in Puerto Williams, Chile, on Sept. 24.

  Photo: AFP

  At this latitude — 55° south — climate change has an exponential effect on flora that react by seeking out low temperatures, Rozzi, 61, said.

  “The most obvious aspect of climate change is the rising temperatures,” he said.

  “These lichens cannot survive” if a certain threshold is passed, and to escape the higher temperatures, they move, he said.

  “In the case of [mosses], we’ve noticed that they have moved. Before they were between 50 and 350 [meters above sea level] and now they are between 100 and 400,” he said.

  Rozzi says that Omora has more diversity per square meter of lichens and mosses than anywhere else in the world.

  They also help to absorb carbon dioxide.

  Another aspect is the elevational diversity gradient, an ecological pattern in which biodiversity changes with elevation.

  The 700m high Bandera hill’s biodiversity changes every 200m and there is a 1.5°C difference in temperature between top and bottom.

  “We can see what changes happen in the high mountains and in the area close to the sea in a very short distance, and we can see how the temperature affects the biodiversity that lives in this river,” said Tamara Contador, 38, a biologist at the Cape Horn International Center.

  She studies the gradients themselves.

  If the height difference between gradients rises or falls on the mountain, scientists can determine whether there has been a global change in temperature.

  They say there has been.

  “On a global level, the polar and subpolar ecosystems are the most affected by climate change, so we are in a place where climate change has a much bigger effect on biodiversity than other places,” Contador said.

  River organisms also form part of the alert system.

  “The organisms that live here are also indicators of water quality and global environmental change,” Contador added.

  River organisms move about and have already increased their reproductive cycle, Rozzi said.

  That confirms there has been a small change to the climate in the area that could have been much greater elsewhere on the planet.

  “Some insects that have an annual eggs to larvae to adulthood cycle are now having two cycles because the temperature has risen,” Rozzi said.

  By studying these organisms and learning from them “we can avoid crossing the threshold that brings us to the extermination of humanity and other life forms,” he added.
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