Find the Natural Resources Throughout Antarctica

Antarctica is an unexplored world all its own

, which is why it is a great place to conduct international science research. One fantastic Antarctican characteristic tops almost the entire land mass and also goes into the surrounding water. It's the great ice sheet. The biggest ice shelf rivals Texas in size, and it's known as the Ross Shelf Ice. Scientists have measured the movement of the ice sheets and determined that every year, the ice mass travels 1800 feet.

Two percent of the planet's water and ninety percent of the world's ice are found in Antarctica. Keeping the sea level maintained is greatly determined by the great inland ice staying stable. If just a few feet were taken off the inland ice, the sea level would rise enough to cause significant disasters to low-altitude areas, like seaports.

Complete melting would cause sea levels across the world to go up 250 feet. Because of these facts, it remains of the highest importance to understand the current status of the Antarctic ice sheets. It doesn't really matter what the ice is doing right at the moment. Providing geophysical history for over a million years is one aspect of the ice shelf.

Ice layers and snow contains information from the past on nuclear explosions, the utilization of lead in gasoline, and the first major lead smelting. It's possible to measure how much common lead is in the ice surface for every year up to the past 60 years. Such ice surfaces have shown a disturbing rise in lead concentration over the last ten years because of the precipitation of the decomposing lead alkyls that came from the combustion of gasoline containing lead. The hope is that we can gather information that will indicate the pollution growth rate and how much we need to worry about this problem.

Interestingly enough, the polar snow and ice didn't record any trace of DDT, but the penguins, seals and some fish in Antarctica did. Able to be dated as a result of their locations in the layers of ice, particles from outer space have been hitting earth as long as the enormous ice sheet was there. Predictions could be offered for the types and quantity of particles that space vehicles will contact, assuming additional research demonstrated that such particles have a repeating pattern.

Vegetation in Antarctica is found mostly as lichens. Mites and springtails are the common land animals. No insects on Antarctica have flight capability; the biggest land animal is a wingless fly. In the ocean around the ice sheet, the flightless penguin and the Weddell seal This Weddell Seal is an amazing creature. It can dive up to 1500 feet and not surface for air for over 30 minutes.

Migrating north in winter time, Adelie penguins make their nests on Antarctic coasts which are not covered with ice. Helping them to stay on a perfect course with amazing accuracy, they possess a biological clock and capability of steering by the sun. With six Adelies let go 2,400 miles away from their nests, a full three of them got back home in only ten months. A few of them were taken by airplane to the South Pole and then let go. Once let go, they quickly found the sun?s location and set off on a straight course for home.

Due to how productive this area is, it's no surprise that the world's largest creature frequents this place as well. Five times bigger than the largest recorded dinosaur, the almost extinct great blue whale eats one ton of shrimp a day. Numerous more types of fish live in Antarctic seas than do in the Arctic Ocean. Over ninety percent of bottom-dwelling fish found in the Antarctic are not found elsewhere. This is a strong indication of the importance of the Antarctic Convergence.

Find the Natural Resources Throughout Antarctica

By: vmcmullen

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