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Day 2: Options and Opportunities • Theme: Governing Across Scales

Life in extreme environments: from knowledge to sustainable exploitation of new resources under growing pressures

Francesco Loreto, Istituto per la Protezione delle Piante (IPP) - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy; Cynan Ellis-Evans, British Antarctic Survey, UK; Nicolas Walter, European Science Foundation, France; Dan Yakir, Weizmann Institute, Israel

Session content:
Climate change worldwide impact on life is exacerbated at the interface with extreme environments. Major changes are expected in response to global warming in ecosystems of polar oceans, the permafrost, high mountains, and in terrestrial ecosystems at the boundary between desert and semi-arid areas. These are among the largest and most fragile areas of our planet.

Whilst there has been a certain amount of research on life at extremes there is currently little information on the resilience of biota when their environments are subjected to change. For instance we lack detailed information on the long-term trends and the amplitude and frequency of spikes in environmental factors that could affect endemic species and their resilience on evolutionary time scales.

Furthermore, the role of the living component of extreme environments in biogeochemical cycling of man-driven Earth is not effectively quantified, or fully described, or adequately exploited.

There is very little information on the contributions to major element cycles of many extreme environments, including, for example, hydrothermal vent ecosystems, subglacial communities or the deep-crust and deep-sediment biosphere.

The roadmap for Research on Life in Extreme Environments has been developed by the EC-funded project "CAREX". The session, endorsed by the IGBP programme iLEAPS, will be an interdisciplinary forum open to scientists and stakeholders investigating life processes under extreme conditions, from different perspectives. It will present the most updated picture of our current understanding of life in extreme environment, fostering knowledge of current and future exploitation of biological resources under growing human and environmental pressures.