Streams

 

Stream dwellers gather in different combinations depending on location.

Water doesn’t reach all streambeds evenly. And, as it travels, it picks up different chemicals and lifeforms depending on which soil it contacts. In a short stream that flows every summer, organisms form mutually supporting groups that need all that water but few nutrients. At the end of a long stream, you might find communities that thrive together on more and in less water.

Researchers are now testing what rising temperatures will do to streams. Will these diverse communities disappear when more water consistently fills the streambeds?

 

Header photo: Onyx River in the Wright Valley. (Nate Biletnikoff / NSF)

Antarcitic landscape compared to Mars landscape, both with brown soil and dried river beds
You need water to survive, so how do you live in a place that’s totally dry for 10 months? Water flows into Antarctica’s streams only during the short summer, and, in some streams, not even then. Streambed residents in Antarctica can simply pause their lives for a year, for decades—even for centuries. Without water, they stop growing, repairing, and reproducing. If and when meltwater reaches their rocky habitats, their metabolisms restart.

If there was life in the channels we’ve seen on Mars, billions of years ago, it might have resembled the living things in Antarctica’s streams.

Left: The Onyx River in Antarctica (Melissa Li / NSF), right: Mars landscape (NASA)