In the light of climate change that is expected to dramatically affect endemic and extremely adapted microbial communities of Continental Antarctica, the project AMICO (An Antarctic terrestrial Observation System for Detecting, understanding, and interpreting Antarctic MIcrobial Communities and their responses to environmental change) aims to establish a permanent monitoring system of environmental parameters at a biological-relevant scale in Victoria Land.
The proposed activities will regard: (i) the maintenance and managing of four stations that have already been installed in the frame of the project “Long-term monitoring of the climatic parameters of air, rock and soil in Antarctica” following the directives of the SCAR ANTOS research group; (ii) the set-up of a web-based system for the public availability of environmental data recorded; (iii) the analysis of environmental data recorded and their influence on biological communities; (iv) the characterization of the diversity of rock and soil communities in the areas where the stations are located to give a baseline picture of their composition, in order to monitor potential future changes.
