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7 - The biogeochemistry and hydrology of McMurdo Dry Valley glaciers: is there life on martian ice now?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

By
Martyn Tranter ,
Liz Bagshaw ,
Andrew G. Fountain  and
Christine Foreman
Edited by
Peter T. Doran ,
W. Berry Lyons  and
Diane M. McKnight
Peter T. Doran
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Chicago
W. Berry Lyons
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Diane M. McKnight
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
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Summary

Introduction

Microbial life on Earth usually requires at least five prerequisites: innoculi, liquid water, and sources of energy, carbon, and nutrients (Rothschild and Manicelli,2001). One of the major advances in the cryospheric sciences during the last decade is the realization that microbial life or innoculi are found in a whole spectrum of environments throughout glacier ice masses of all scales, from the snow cover, through ice surface (or supraglacial) environments, within ice (or englacial) environments through to ice bed (or subglacial) environments (Hodson et al., 2008). A remarkable observation is that apparently viable microbes can be found throughout the whole 4 km of ice column found near the center of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet above subglacial Lake Vostok (Priscu et al., 2008). Hence, glaciers on Earth can now be regarded as biomes or ecotomes, and the question arises whether or not glaciers on other celestial bodies have the potential to act as ecotomes. This chapter begins to provide an answer by first describing how microbial life exists in the cold glaciers of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and second, by speculating on whether or not there is the chance of life in the glaciers and ice caps of Mars. We make the assumption that potential microbial life on Mars is carbon based and requires the same five prerequisites for microbial life as on Earth (Rothschild and Manicelli, 2001).

Type
Chapter
Information
Life in Antarctic Deserts and other Cold Dry Environments
Astrobiological Analogs
 , pp. 195 - 220
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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