The microorganisms that evolved at low temperatures express cold-adapted enzymes endowed with unique catalytic properties in comparison to their mesophilic homologues, i.e., higher catalytic efficiency, improved flexibility, and lower thermal stabili...
The Roseobacter clade represents one of the most abundant groups of marine bacteria and plays important biogeochemical roles in marine environments. Roseobacter genomes commonly contain a conserved gene transfer agent (GTA) gene cluster. A major caps...
The Antarctica and High Arctic regions are extreme environments, with average maximum temperatures below 0 °C for most days of the year. Interestingly, fungi inhabit these regions. This review describes the history of fungal surveys near the Syow...
Polar areas are not exempt from anthropogenic pollution. Heavy metals have been detected in Arctic and Antarctic lakes. Bacteria, at the base of the food web, can possess the ability to adsorb or immobilize heavy metals in the environment and reduce...
Polar marine biota have adapted to thrive under one of the ocean’s most inhospitable scenarios, where extremes of temperature, light photoperiod and ice disturbance, along with ecological interactions, have selected species with a unique suite...
The global spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens to plummet society back to the pre-antibiotic era through a resurgence of common everyday infections’ morbidity. Thus, studies investigating antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and an...
9 February 2021
The globe is presently reliant on natural resources, fossil fuels, and crude oil to support the world’s energy requirements. Human exploration for oil resources is always associated with irreversible effects. Primary sources of hydrocarbon pollution...
Polar organisms have been found to develop unique defences against the extreme environment environment, leading to the biosynthesis of novel molecules with diverse bioactivities. This review covers the 219 novel natural products described since 2001,...
The advancement of innovative underwater remote sensing detection and imaging methods, such as continuous wave laser line scan or pulsed laser (i.e., LiDAR—Light Detection and Ranging) imaging approaches can provide novel solutions for studying...
In response to heightened threat to Arctic marine biodiversity due to polar ice melt, the following paper seeks to use qualitative secondary research to analyze existing anthropogenic threat to Arctic marine life and to evaluate current efforts on th...
The application of an ever-increasing number of methodological approaches and tools is positively contributing to the development and yield of bioprospecting procedures. In this context, cold-adapted bacteria from polar environments are becoming more...
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are increasingly detected in remote environments. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the types and concentrations of PFAS found in the air, water, soil, sediments, ice, and precipitation...
Marine organisms living in extreme environments such as the Arctic and Antarctic have evolved remarkable adaptation mechanisms to survive harsh conditions, including low temperatures, high salinity, and seasonal fluctuations in light and nutrients. A...
We present a compact laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) spectrometer prototype (SFIDA–405) designed for in-field operation in polar environments. It uses 405 nm excitation to acquire LIF spectra in the 450–930 nm spectral range on a solid surface via a...
The poles constitute 14% of the Earth’s biosphere: The aquatic Arctic surrounded by land in the north, and the frozen Antarctic continent surrounded by the Southern Ocean. In spite of an extremely cold climate in addition to varied topographies...
New detections of thermophiles in psychrobiotic (i.e., bearing cold-tolerant life forms) marine and terrestrial habitats including Arctic marine sediments, Antarctic accretion ice, permafrost, and elsewhere are continually being reported. These micro...
The Arctic and Antarctic regions constitute 14% of the total biosphere. Although they differ in their physiographic characteristics, both are strongly affected by snow and ice cover changes, extreme photoperiods and low temperatures, and are still la...
Climate change is expected to impact the global distribution and diversity of arthropods, with warmer temperatures forcing species to relocate, acclimate, adapt, or go extinct. The Arctic and Antarctic regions are extremely sensitive to climate chang...
Background: The bacterial community responses to oil spill events are key elements to predict the fate of hydrocarbon pollution in receiving aquatic environments. In polar systems, cold temperatures and low irradiance levels can limit the effectivene...
Floating and washed ashore marine plastic debris (MPD) is a growing environmental challenge. It has become evident that secluded locations including the Arctic, Antarctic, and remote islands are being impacted by plastic pollution generated thousands...
Boreal and Arctic regions have warmed up to four times quicker than the rest of the planet since the 1970s. As a result, boreal and tundra ecosystems are experiencing more frequent and higher intensity extreme weather events and disturbances, such as...
While more and more studies are being conducted on carbonaceous fractions—organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC)—in urban areas, there are still too few studies about these species and their effects in polar areas due to their very low concent...
This study examines the trends and interannual variability of extreme precipitation in Antarctica, using six decades (1963–2023) of daily precipitation data from Russia’s Novolazarevskaya Station in East Antarctica. The results reveal dec...
Polar mesospheric cloud (PMC) data obtained from the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM)/Cloud Imaging and Particle Size (CIPS) experiment and Himawari-8/Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) observations are analyzed for multi-year climatology and inte...
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the largest glacier reserve outside the Antarctic and Arctic regions. Climate warming has affected the reserve of freshwater resources and led to frequent glacier disasters. However, due to its extreme environment of hypox...
Many marine bacteria produce exopolysaccharides (EPS) as a strategy for growth, adhering to solid surfaces, and to survive adverse conditions. There is growing interest in isolating new EPS producing bacteria from marine environments, particularly fr...
Permafrost tundra contains more than twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere, and it is warming six times as fast as the global mean. Tundra lakes dynamics is a robust indicator of global climate processes, and is still not well unders...
Increases in Arctic temperatures have accelerated melting of the Greenland icesheet, exposing intertidal organisms, such as the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, to high air temperatures and low salinities in summer. However, the interaction of these combi...
Real-time monitoring of marine ecosystems is crucial for global climate change research. In extreme marine environments such as the westerly regions in the Arctic and Antarctic, monitoring buoys and platforms often suffer from severe challenges, incl...
Monitoring the evolution of snow on the ground and lake ice—two of the most important components of the changing northern environment—is essential. In this paper, we describe a lightweight, compact and autonomous 24 GHz frequency-modulate...
Zooplankton is a fundamental group in aquatic ecosystems representing the base of the food chain. It forms a link between the lower trophic levels with secondary consumers and shows marked fluctuations in populations with environmental change, especi...
Understanding paleoenvironmental conditions of the permafrost formation allows us to estimate the permafrost carbon pool and its behavior upon thawing in a changing climate. In order to classify different types of ground ice and to reconstruct paleoe...
Effective monitoring of changes in the geographic distribution of cryospheric vegetation requires high-resolution and accurate baseline maps. The rationale of the present study is to compare multiple feature extraction approaches to remotely mapping...
The Arctic atmospheric boundary layer (AABL) in the central Arctic was characterized by dropsonde, lidar, ice thickness and airborne in situ measurements during the international Polar Airborne Measurements and Arctic Regional Climate Model Simulatio...
Emerging contaminants (ECs) comprise diverse pollutant classes that are increasingly detected in remote environments due to their persistence and long-range transport potential. In cold regions, atmospheric cold-trapping processes favour their accumu...
Mapping spatiotemporal changes in the distribution of blue ice regions (BIRs) in Antarctica requires repeated, precise, and high-resolution baseline maps of the blue ice extent. This study demonstrated the design and application of a newly-developed...