For the first time, scientists have
discovered that Antarctica's massive ice sheet is hiding an estuary, where
fresh water from rivers mixes with salt water from the ocean.
Hidden at the head of the thick Ross Ice
Shelf in West Antarctica, a strange and singular ecosystem could exist in the
estuary, researchers said.
"We know in the sub-aerial environment
that estuaries are fascinating," said Richard Alley, a glaciologist at
Penn State University and co-author of a study.
"You
have got a mixture of two very strange environments, so whether you're going to
find anything that shakes up the world, I don't know, but it's a fascinating
target," said Alley.
The tidal mixing zone sits beneath the end
of the Whillans Ice Stream, one of the fast-moving "ice rivers" in
West Antarctica. Ice streams are features that flow quickly compared to the
surrounding ice, 'LiveScience' reported.
Researchers announced, earlier this year,
that the buried glacial lake contained microbial life. Estuaries are channels
only partly open to the ocean, and a one-kilometre-wide channel snakes inland
from the Ross Sea toward Lake Whillans.
The river-like channel is about 7 meters
deep. Researchers led by Huw Horgan of Victoria University in New Zealand,
found signs of a thin brackish layer of sub-glacial water, ocean water and
sediment several kilometres inland of the Whillans Ice Stream grounding line.
The grounding line is where the bottom of a
glacier loses contact with land and floats on water. The study was published in
the journal Geology.
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