Microclimate monitoring around lichen habitat in Barton Peninsular, King George Island, Antarctica

Abstract

Lichens are widely distributed on earth including extreme environments such as tropic, desert, high alpine and polar areas. Lichens are major flora in the terrestrial ecosystem of the Antarctic and account for more than 70% of floral diversity in Antarctic terrestrial ecosystem. Their distribution patterns are very complex and look dependent on the microclimatic conditions, which in turn are dependent on the geomorphological features. We selected five long-term ecological research (LTER) sites to study environmental factors that affect floral distribution, responses of lichens, mosses, and microoragnisms to environmental changes. Major flora in these sites was Sanionia, Polytrichastrum, Cladonia, Ochrolechia, Psoroma, Spharophorus, and Stereocaulon. We monitored temperature, relative humidity, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), temperature and water content of substrate from February 2013 to January 2014 to understand diversity of microclimate and effect on lichen distribution. Maximum PAR value in each LTER site was highly variable ranging from 1823.7 to 2338.7 μE. Maximum and minimum temperature records were 20°C and -17°C and they were variable with 8°C and 4°C differences depending on sites. We compared weather conditions for specific positions with different vegetation to examine if some of the microclimate factors can explain different distribution patterns of lichen species.