Publications by authors named "Johann P Klages"

Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the unique marine habitat under Antarctica's ice shelves, covering about 1.6 million km, highlighting the extreme conditions and the potential impact of climate change on this little-known ecosystem.
  • - Researchers drilled boreholes through a 200 m thick ice shelf to collect sediment samples, discovering evidence of intense spatial competition among encrusting macrobenthos like bryozoans, which are sensitive to environmental changes.
  • - Findings reveal that competition in sub-ice-shelf environments is more severe and complex than in open-water polar regions, suggesting that community dynamics under ice shelves resemble those found in warmer, tropical regions rather than their cold-water counterparts.
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Where polar ice sheets meet the coast, they can flow into the sea as floating ice shelves. The seabed underneath is in complete darkness, and may be Earth's least known surface habitat. Few taxa there have been fully identified to named species (see Supplemental information) - remarkable for a habitat spanning nearly 1.

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The mid-Cretaceous period was one of the warmest intervals of the past 140 million years, driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of around 1,000 parts per million by volume. In the near absence of proximal geological records from south of the Antarctic Circle, it is disputed whether polar ice could exist under such environmental conditions. Here we use a sedimentary sequence recovered from the West Antarctic shelf-the southernmost Cretaceous record reported so far-and show that a temperate lowland rainforest environment existed at a palaeolatitude of about 82° S during the Turonian-Santonian age (92 to 83 million years ago).

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Glaciological and oceanographic observations coupled with numerical models show that warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) incursions onto the West Antarctic continental shelf cause melting of the undersides of floating ice shelves. Because these ice shelves buttress glaciers feeding into them, their ocean-induced thinning is driving Antarctic ice-sheet retreat today. Here we present a multi-proxy data based reconstruction of variability in CDW inflow to the Amundsen Sea sector, the most vulnerable part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, during the Holocene epoch (from 11.

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Subglacial lakes are widespread beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet but their control on ice-sheet dynamics and their ability to harbour life remain poorly characterized. Here we present evidence for a palaeo-subglacial lake on the Antarctic continental shelf. A distinct sediment facies recovered from a bedrock basin in Pine Island Bay indicates deposition within a low-energy lake environment.

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