RT journal article
T1 Unveiling the large coverage of red snow algae blooms in antarctic coastal snowfields
A1 Román, Alejandro
A1 Navarro, Gabriel
A1 Barbero González, Luis Carlos
A1 Fernández-Marín, Beatriz
A1 García-Plazaola, José Ignacio
A1 González Ortegón, Enrique
A1 Caballero, Isabel
A1 Tovar-Sánchez, Antonio
A2 Ciencias de la Tierra
AB Several locations across Antarctica are experiencing snow algal blooms on the surfaces of coastal snowfields, which significantly reduce surface albedo – by up to 20% – and consequently enhance the melting of snow and ice. Here we revealed the potential distribution of red snow algal blooms in the Antarctic South Shetland Islands between 2018 and 2024. A supervised machine learning approach was applied to 45 cloud-free Sentinel-2 images, using spectral information obtained from a drone-mounted hyperspectral sensor to monitor bloom extent across the entire archipelago. Our results provide clear evidence of the spatial distribution of red snow algae blooms in the South Shetland Islands, which covered up to 12% of the total surface area of a single island during the growth season. These findings offer valuable insights into the extent of red snow algae, supporting ongoing efforts to monitor their evolution and to understand their ecological implications under current climate change scenarios.
PB Nature
SN 2662-4435
YR 2026
FD 2026-01-03
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/38367
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/38367
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 10-may-2026