Antarctica Has A Vast Abundance of Resources

Cordoned off as a realm only for international scientific endeavors, Antarctica offers countless opportunities for research that can not be obtained anywhere else on the globe. The most striking characteristic of Antarctica proves to be the enormous ice shelf that covers over not simply nearly all of the land, but furthermore pushes out into the water as a permanent floating ice shelf which exists sometimes hundred of miles across the sea. The biggest ice shelf rivals Texas in size, and it's known as the Ross Shelf Ice. As the ice sheet moves, scientists have clocked it moving at a rate of 1800 feet per year.

Not only does Antarctica contain almost 2% of the total water on the planet, it contains an impressive 90% of the world's ice. Sea level is governed mainly by the stability of that vast inland ice shelf. If most of the shelf were to melt to water, this would dramatically raise the sea level, to the point of being a disaster for the seacoast cities and all seaports.

If all this ice melted at once, then the sea levels would go up by more than 250 feet. As a result, we have to find out just how the Antarctic icecap is doing. The backward or forward movement of the ice doesn't really matter to most. Not only does the ice hold a lot of moisture, but it is also a giant geophysical record that could be up to a million years old.

It has been proven that these layers of ice can tell us about nuclear explosions or even when lead was used in gasoline. For the last 60 years, there have been measurements taken of the concentration of lead on the surface of the ice. 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. This offers us the chance to examine the threat of pollution to the planet.

Interestingly enough, the polar snow and ice didn't record any trace of DDT, but the penguins, seals and some fish in Antarctica did. Objects from space that have crashed into earth from the time of the existence of this enormous ice shelf may be dated according to their positions in the different layers of the ice. 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.

Because of the conditions, lichens make up the majority of the vegetation. You can find animals in the form of mites and springtails. With the biggest land animal a wingless fly, no flying insects live here. In Antarctica's waters, you'll find the southernmost mammals. They are the Weddell seal and flightless penguin. When investigators took a look at the Weddell seal, they were shocked to learn that it could dive as deep as 1500 feet as it looked for sustenance.

Antarctica offers a nesting ground to Adelie Penguins, who like the iceless areas on the coastline. They only leave once winter approaches, and then they head north. These penguins will migrate north in the winter, showing remarkable ability to navigate using the sun and their inner biological clocks. Six Adelies traveled 2400 miles to their original rookery in an experiment. Three of the birds returned in ten months. A few of them were transported by plane to the South Pole and then let go. As soon as they knew they were released, all it took was a second to get their bearings, and they were soon off in the exactly correct direction.

The abundance of this part of earth is shown as the living place for the greatest animal that has ever roamed the earth. Eating nearly one ton of shrimp daily, and weighing in at five times any past dinosaur, the great blue whale is nearing extinction. Compared to the Arctic, Antarctic seas contain a much greater diversity of fish. 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.

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