Melting Ice Sheets Are Releasing Toxins in Our Water — Bacteria Could Take Some of That Out of Play.
But the problem — and the possibility of microbial help — has significance for anyone on the planet.
Rivers of water flow over and through the sheet and out into the ocean, as shown below in a video taken by a UCLA research term during the massive Greenland ice sheet melt of 2012.
In addition to water, the Greenland ice sheet is also home to contaminants from locations around the world — stored in the "cryosphere."
The cryosphere is the habitat of frozen water, snow, and ice, that cover many parts of the planet.
Part of the life in the cryosphere of the Greenland ice sheet is microbial, and it is called " cryoconite."
The toxic tide of human pollutants finds itself partly written in the ice sheets of Greenland, and seems to be mixing it up with its foxhole partners, the icy microbes that live there.
Partial research findings include: Some microbes already identified from contaminated environments in other regions of the world are related to organisms found in these samples.
Other bacteria located in the ice sheet samples are related to microbes less sensitive to lead, arsenic, and possibly copper.
The study found that microbial communities from all the sampling sites in the Greenland ice sheet showed some ability to resist, or remediate, contamination melting out of the ice.