{"id":856815,"date":"2026-08-16T02:36:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T02:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856815\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T02:36:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T02:36:20","slug":"grass-is-spreading-in-the-antarctic-scientists-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856815\/","title":{"rendered":"Grass is spreading in the Antarctic, scientists warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Angus<\/p>\n

August 16, 2026 \u2014 9:45am<\/p>\n

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Grass is spreading across some regions of the Antarctic as ice retreats, threatening Southern Ocean islands with the prospect of wildfires in another sign of how human-caused climate change is warping the polar wilderness.<\/p>\n

Australian scientists systematically reviewed a raft of existing datasets and papers, and found an overall increase in grass populations in the icy but fast-warming region. They presented the preliminary findings this week at the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) conference in Oslo.<\/p>\n

\"GrassesGrasses and moss \u2013 pictured here on Heard Island \u2013 grow naturally across sub-Antarctic islands and parts of the continent, but there\u2019s evidence grass populations are expanding under climate change.Naomi Monk<\/p>\n

Professor Melodie McGeoch, an ecologist from Monash University who supervised the research, said the different strands of evidence come together to \u201craise the prospect of a dramatically and rapidly changing Antarctic region, and in particular this prospect of fire\u201d.<\/p>\n

A wildfire in January last year ripped across 55 per cent of Amsterdam Island<\/a>, an island of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, and in 2024 a fire also burnt on Bird Island in the sub-Antarctic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re cold, wet, boggy, icy, and the vegetation across many of these places is pretty sparse, and so the idea of fire in these areas is quite remarkable,\u201d McGeoch said of the islands.<\/p>\n

Grass is more flammable than other types of vegetation in the region, and both invasive bluegrass and native species seed and spread rapidly after a fire. \u201cGrass-dominated systems are more likely to burn,\u201d McGeoch said.<\/p>\n

\"GrassGrass growing across western Antarctica.Noemi Sheppard<\/p>\n

Native hairgrass grows naturally on the Antarctic continent, particularly on rocky parts of the western Antarctic Peninsula \u2013 the part that branches off the continent like a tentacle \u2013 and the nearby South Shetland Islands.<\/p>\n

But the area is one of the fastest-warming regions in the southern hemisphere, and increasing temperatures have likely driven grass growth on the peninsula and nearby islands normally dominated by hardy mosses and lichen.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly, we\u2019re starting to see grasses do well, or better than they used to,\u201d Monash PhD student and research leader Noemie Sheppard said, as ice retreats and exposes soil, grass can colonise.<\/p>\n

While the overall trend implies a net increase in grass across the region, the story is complex and it varies between different locations, particularly between sub-Antarctic islands.<\/p>\n

\"InvasiveInvasive grass growing on Marion Island.Naomi Monk\"GrassesGrasses and moss growing on Heard Island.Naomi Monk<\/p>\n

In some places grasses are decreasing, while different factors including the eradication of invasive rabbits from some islands have also influenced vegetation cover, Sheppard said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single island is undergoing its own mini-climate change. Some are drying, some are wetting, some are increasing in temperature, so all the grasses across these islands are undergoing different changes,\u201d Sheppard said.<\/p>\n

The researchers turned their attention to grass after noticing Azorella macquariensis, a species of cushion plant, was doing poorly on Macquarie Island while other grasses seemed to thrive.<\/p>\n

\"AA once healthy cushion plant suffering from dieback on Macquarie Island due to warming.Dana Bergstrom via\u00a0antarctica.gov.au<\/p>\n

Antarctic hairgrass is increasing at a faster rate than invasive bluegrass, according to the preliminary research which is yet to be peer-reviewed. However that could change as the climate grows warmer.<\/p>\n

Climate change, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed the Antarctic peninsula by 3 degrees and amplified rare atmospheric warming events such as one in 2024 that saw temperatures in east Antarctica shoot 28 degrees<\/a> above average.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Dr<\/a><\/p>\n

The idea of whether Antarctica is \u201cgreening\u201d in response to warming, and to what degree, however, is hotly debated by scientists.<\/p>\n

A 2024 Nature paper<\/a> reported vegetation cover on the Antarctic Peninsula had grown from less than 1 square kilometre in 1986 to 12 square kilometres in 2021, and the \u201crate of greening\u201d had accelerated by 30 per cent between 2016 and 2021.<\/p>\n

Other scientists said the study over-egged the trend<\/a>, and used satellite imagery critics deemed unreliable because of persistent cloud cover and poor resolution not suited to capturing Antarctic\u2019s small and patchy vegetation, which may have led to an overestimation of greening.<\/p>\n

Researchers argued in a new Nature\u00a0comment paper published on Friday<\/a> the reported greening rate was theoretically impossible and, while vegetation cover was expected to increase with warming, it was likely to do so at a more moderate rate.<\/p>\n

McGeoch, a chief investigator with the Securing Antarctica\u2019s Environmental Future research group, said more boots-on-the ground research across Antarctica was desperately needed in a crucial region that\u2019s notoriously difficult to study.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Index<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at a point in time where there\u2019s this awful acceleration of very rapid changes that are difficult to anticipate the ultimate consequences of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the same time, we\u2019re at a point where all our technologies, our data capability, our high-performance computing, the advances in AI and so on are accelerating, which excitingly gives us the opportunity to answer some of these questions quite rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get to the heart of what\u2019s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"AngusAngus Dalton<\/a> is the science reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 16, 2026 \u2014 9:45am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,128],"class_list":["post-856815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}