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Abstract Primary production is fundamental to ecosystems, and in many extreme environments production is facilitated by microbial mats. Microbial mats are complex assemblages of photo- and heterotrophic microorganisms colonizing sediment and soil surfaces. These communities are the dominant producers of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, where they occupy lentic and lotic environments as well as intermittently wet soils. While the influence of microbial mats on stream nutrient dynamics and lake organic matter cycling is well documented, the influence of microbial mats on underlying soil is less well understood, particularly the effects of microbial mat nitrogen and carbon fixation. Taylor Valley soils occur across variable levels of inorganic phosphorus availability, with the Ross Sea drift containing four times that of the Taylor drifts, providing opportunities to examine how soil geochemistry influences microbial mats and the ecological functions they regulate. We found that inorganic phosphorus availability is positively correlated with microbial mat biomass, pigment concentration and nitrogen fixation potential. Additionally, our results demonstrate that dense microbial mats influence the ecological functioning of underlying soils by enriching organic carbon and total nitrogen stocks (two times higher). This work contributes to ongoing questions regarding the sources of energy fuelling soil food webs and the regional carbon balance in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. 

In situ observed data are commonly used as species occurrence response variables in species distribution models. However, the use of remotely observed data from high‐resolution multispectral remote‐sensing images as a source of presence/absence data for species distribution models remains under‐developed. Here, we describe an ensemble species distribution model of black microbial mats "Nostoc" using presence/absence points derived from the unmixing of 4‐m resolution WorldView‐2 and WorldView‐3 images in the Lake Fryxell basin region of Taylor Valley, Antarctica. Environmental and topographical characteristics such as soil moisture, snow, elevation, slope, and aspect were used as predictor variables in our models. We demonstrate that we can build and run ensemble species distribution models using both dependent and independent variables derived from remote‐sensing data to generate spatially explicit habitat suitability maps. Snow and soil moisture were found to be the most important variables accounting for about 80% of the variation in the distribution of black mats throughout the Fryxell basin. This study highlights the potential contribution of high‐resolution remote‐sensing to species distribution modeling and informs new studies incorporating remotely derived species occurrences in species distribution models, especially in remote areas where access to in situ data is often limited. 

Available soil moisture is thought to be the limiting factor for most ecosystem processes in the cold polar desert of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs) of Antarctica. Previous studies have shown that microfauna throughout the MDVs are capable of biological activity when sufficient soil moisture is available (~2–10% gravimetric water content), but few studies have attempted to quantify the distribution, abundance, and frequency of soil moisture on scales beyond that of traditional field work or local field investigations. In this study, we present our work to quantify the soil moisture content of soils throughout the Fryxell basin using multispectral satellite remote sensing techniques. Our efforts demonstrate that ecologically relevant abundances of liquid water are common across the landscape throughout the austral summer. On average, the Fryxell basin of Taylor Valley is modeled as containing 1.5 ± 0.5% gravimetric water content (GWC) across its non-fluvial landscape with ~23% of the landscape experiencing an average GWC > 2% throughout the study period, which is the observed limit of soil nematode activity. These results indicate that liquid water in the soils of the MDVs may be more abundant than previously thought, and that the distribution and availability of liquid water is dependent on both soil properties and the distribution of water sources. These results can also help to identify ecological hotspots in the harsh polar Antarctic environment and serve as a baseline for detecting future changes in the soil hydrological regime. 

Abstract We investigate the spatial distribution, spectral properties and temporal variability of primary producers (e.g. communities of microbial mats and mosses) throughout the Fryxell basin of Taylor Valley, Antarctica, using high-resolution multispectral remote-sensing data. Our results suggest that photosynthetic communities can be readily detected throughout the Fryxell basin based on their unique near-infrared spectral signatures. Observed intra- and inter-annual variability in spectral signatures are consistent with short-term variations in mat distribution, hydration and photosynthetic activity. Spectral unmixing is also implemented in order to estimate mat abundance, with the most densely vegetated regions observed from orbit correlating spatially with some of the most productive regions of the Fryxell basin. Our work establishes remote sensing as a valuable tool in the study of these ecological communities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys and demonstrates how future scientific investigations and the management of specially protected areas could benefit from these tools and techniques.