From Lisbon to Antarctica – MRes student conducts groundbreaking field research

Vegetation in Barton Peninsula, King George Island

We met Marina Bowen, an Ecology, Evolution and Conservation MRes student who travelled to the Antarctic for a field trip of a lifetime.

Marina travelled to King George Island, Antarctica, for an exciting MRes project about determining the current and future distribution of key maritime Antarctic vegetation species. 

Marina, can you tell us a little about your background and your study up until now?

Before I came to Imperial, I studied my undergraduate degree in Geography at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT) at the University of Lisbon. While at IGOT, I specialised within the field of biogeography, with my final project (seminario) focusing on the most influential abiotic factors that lead to vegetation distribution within the Vale dos Lagosteiros (a coastal valley in the south of the Lisbon metropolitan area).

It was at IGOT that I met Paula Matos, who supervises me externally for my MRes project. Originally, Paula was my professor at IGOT, where she taught me Landscape Ecology and Ecology of Global Ecology. Since leaving IGOT, I have collaborated on the forthcoming article titled 'Testing the potential of automatic classification of digital photographs to assess vegetation functional types cover in Maritime Antarctica.'

It's very exciting to have travelled to Antarctica for your research, can you tell us a bit about your aims?

My MRes project aims to determine the species distribution of the dominant plants, lichens and mosses across the Antarctic peninsula. Species distribution models of terrestrial vegetation in Antarctica are generally limited to small spatial extents or overlook individual species. Therefore this project is the first of its kind to determine individual species distribution of terrestrial antarctic vegetation at a regional scale.

Can you tell us about your trip and how the research developed?

In order to collect data to conduct this research, I stayed on King George Island, Antarctica from 16 of January to 28 February. My time there was split between two bases in order to collect data from two different parts of the island. I spent the first three weeks at King Sejong station, South Korea, followed by a stay at Professor Julio Escudero base, Chile.

The data collection will compile a dataset comprised of high-resolution camera and UAS (drone) imagery which will be used to create my species distribution. In order to collect the data, a 30cmx30cm quadrat is used with photos being taken of the quadrat at each sample location.

The images are then corrected for distortion using Darktable software before being analysed for species presence and absence within each image.

I am collecting data on the dominant species: the two vascular plants Deschampsia antarctica E.Desv and Colobanthus quitensis (Kunth) Bartl., the lichens Usnea aurantiaco-atra (Jacq) Bory (fertile) and Usnea antarctica Du Rietz (sorediate), and the dominant moss found in the region Sanionia Uncinata (Hedw.) Loeske.

"Being able to conduct research here is a dream come true. I hope my project will open the door to pursuing a career as a researcher and continue to deepen my knowledge of Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems through a PhD". Marina Bowen

The research aims to map their current spatial distribution and apply climate prediction models, with the hypothesis that regional climate warming will lead to a poleward and altitudinal shift in the species distribution. This project is being supervised internally by Dr Emma Cavan and Professor Colin Prentice and externally by Paula Matos (University of Lisbon). The project is under the BIOCRUST-25 project, funded by the Portuguese Polar Program (PROPOLAR).

It sounds like a fantastic experience! Well done. What are your next steps from here?

I have always had a fascination with arctic and antarctic ecosystems, so being able to conduct research here is a dream come true. Therefore, I hope that my research for this project will open the door to pursue a career as a researcher and continue to deepen my knowledge of Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems through a PhD.