Times of the Islands Fall 2023

More documents

Recommendations

Info

green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources about mats is they give us a window into what life might have been like on Earth before the rise of plants and animals,” Lingappa says. Individual microbes—which were the dominant lifeforms on Earth 3.5 billion years ago—are too small to be recognizable as fossils, but microbial mats are a different story. Their structures are large and complex enough to recognize as fossils billions of years later. This can be tricky, as some rock features are easily confused with microbial mats, but Lingappa says there are clues to look for. Rock layers tend to stay consistently parallel, while microbial mat layers will be thicker on topographical high points and thinner on low points. This is because microbial mat growth is dependent on sunlight. Sand grains trapped within layers can also give away a microbial mat fossil, because mats are sticky enough to trap sand grains that would normally roll off of rocks and other non-living surfaces. Some scientists are also using mats to narrow down the search for life on other planets. Because no one has found evidence of extraterrestrial life—yet—Lingappa says, “We don’t really know what we’re looking for.” One approach to this challenge is studying the most extreme forms of life on Earth, which are mostly microbial and can often be found in the form of mats. Besides the intertidal mats flourishing on Little Ambergris Cay, there are many other types of mats on Earth, some living in extreme environments—like near underwater thermal vents, which are heated by magma and can reach over 700ºF, or in salt marshes that are too salty for other species. These mats give scientists an idea of what life might look like elsewhere, both past and present. Even if life does not exist on Mars today, it may have existed in the past. Scientists are studying traces of ancient microbial mats on Earth and looking for the same microscopic fossilized “fingerprints” on other planets. Besides shedding light on the past, microbial mats play a key role in Earth’s present. Chemically, they help cycle things like carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur and provide nutrients to surrounding ecosystems. Physically, they help hold down and stabilize the shoreline. Microbial mats, especially those in mangrove ecosystems, also contribute to carbon sequestration—drawing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it in the sediment. Although Lingappa says this type of carbon sequestration isn’t a magic bullet for climate change, it is This “slice” of a microbial mat shows the various layers, each dominated by a different type of microbe. encouraging. Intertidal ecosystems—swamps, lagoons, and similar environments where microbial mats form— contribute disproportionately to carbon sequestration, meaning they can store a larger fraction of carbon from the air than the fraction of the earth’s surface area they take up. If these mats disappeared, Lingappa says, all the carbon stored within them would be suddenly released back into the atmosphere. That’s why Lingappa’s team also studied microbial mats’ resilience to environmental shifts. They went to Little Ambergris Cay in 2017 to investigate how changing sea levels might impact the microbial mats there. What they learned: When they cut away slices of mat and transplanted them to different elevations, the mats continued to grow. Although the microbe types within transplanted mats stayed the same, the mats changed texture—from dry and leathery to wet and goopy or vice versa, depending on the water level at their new elevation. During this study, category-5 Hurricane Irma swept through the Islands, and the team’s outdoor research lab. Although Irma devastated many areas in the Caribbean, its silver lining was that it allowed Lingappa’s team to study firsthand how microbial mats responded to being 46 www.timespub.tc
green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources More studies are underway in TCI to better understand how microbial mats might help stabilize sediment after a hurricane and help islands keep pace with rising sea levels. flooded, covered in sediment, or uprooted and deposited elsewhere by severe storms. Irma decimated large swathes of Little Ambergris Cay’s microbial mats, but new mats grew rapidly over surfaces exposed or deposited by the hurricane. In fact, the mats grew much faster after the hurricane than they normally would while undisturbed, and Little Ambergris’s mat communities largely recovered from Irma within two years. Mats’ rapid regrowth after being decimated by hurricanes or transplanted to different elevations suggest these lifeforms excel at adapting quickly to environmental disruption—which, due to climate change, is on the rise. Lingappa says it’s encouraging to know that these mats could recover from storms or rising sea levels, but she stresses that climate change isn’t that simple. “One of the things that’s scary about climate change is that it’s going to cause a lot of different things to happen,” she says, including extreme weather events like hurricanes, rising sea levels, and changing temperature and chemistry in both seawater and the atmosphere. “While we can study one of these effects at a time, we really don’t know how they will interact . . . As we see these impacts happening, there are going to be surprises.” More research is needed to fully understand how mats will respond to the bigger picture of climate change. To this end, more studies are underway in TCI. Dr. Lizzy Trower and her team from the University of Colorado, Boulder, have been working on Little Ambergris Cay to better understand how microbial mats might help stabilize sediment after a hurricane. By trapping sediment delivered by storms, mats have the potential to help islands keep pace with rising sea levels. Trower’s team is also interested in microbial mats on other islands in the Turks & Caicos, and is exploring a potential collaboration with TCI Community College. Lingappa says that while scientists have known about microbial mats for decades, they only recently got the DNA sequencing technology to start understanding mats’ inner workings. “There are so many different microbes in the mats,” she says, “and most of them, we don’t even know what they do.” Mat research in places like Little Ambergris Cay could reveal new information on Earth’s past—and its future. a Rachel Craft is a Colorado-based writer and recovered engineer who loves all things outdoors. You can learn more about her at www.racheldelaneycraft.com. Times of the Islands Fall 2023 47
Page 1 and 2: TIMES OF THE SAMPLING THE SOUL OF T
Page 3 and 4: Building Your Vision, Delivering Ex
Page 5 and 6: Crafted for the fl ow of life. Form
Page 7: Arc By Piero Lissoni Elevated Beach
Page 10 and 11: The Leading Private Bank in the Tur
Page 17 and 18: Where the welcome is always warm. w
Page 19 and 20: the way it was It was quite a voyag
Page 21 and 22: hermit crabs in a pair made of russ
Page 23 and 24: making a difference Opposite page:
Page 25 and 26: print, and improve our lives as wel
Page 27: wear it in the ocean. These product
Page 30 and 31: Hermit crabs change shells after ea
Page 32 and 33: 32 www.timespub.tc
Page 35 and 36: around the islands Opposite page: T
Page 37 and 38: Sisal produced in the Caicos Island
Page 39 and 40: green pages Newsletter of the Depar
Page 41 and 42: green pages newsletter of the depar
Page 43 and 44: green pages newsletter of the depar
Page 45: green pages newsletter of the depar
Page 50: The Turks & Caicos Islands are a sm
Page 53: is sport development is eligible to
Page 56 and 57: The Ashley’s Learning Centre’s
Page 58 and 59: workshops, and events that cultivat
Page 60 and 61: TMW2022.qxp_Layout 1 3/2/22 3:41 PM
Page 62 and 63: astrolabe newsletter of the Turks &
Page 70 and 71: Time zone Eastern Standard Time (ES
Page 72 and 73: Government/Legal system TCI is a Br
Page 74 and 75: classified ads B R A Z I L I A N B
Page 76: We help you turn some day into righ

Times of the Islands Fall 2023

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?