Page 13 - The Bell Tower - Summer/Fall 2015

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lichens exist without the benefit of being attached to the ground. “They were blowing around on the ground like tumbleweeds,” said Nelson.
The group mapped the basin with GPS technology and took samples of the “vagrant lichens” for genetic analysis.
Before returning to the far cooler and moist climate of Northern Maine, Nelson’s team also studied lichens near a volcano that erupted in 2008. Nelson said he visited Chaiten Volcano in south- ern Chile in 2012, four years after the eruption. He made a second visit this year and sampled the lichens again. “What we found was that the lichen species have doubled since we last checked.”
Nelson said he will probably return to Chile in January of 2016. In the meantime, he is also conducting research into the relationship between lichens and the recent catastrophic die-off of caribou in Alaska and far northern Canada.
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Photos Clockwise from top left – 1. Members of the team work with the stark, almost Martian, landscape in the background. The
last recorded precipitation in Altacama occurred in 1997; 2. In 2008, Chaiten Volcano erupted in southern Chile. Dr. Nelson studied lichens in the region four years after the eruption, and this year he took samples a second time; 3. Dr. Nelson measures topographic variations in the ground using a ruler and a quadrat while Daniel Stanton records data in the background; 4. Nelson’s team gathered drinking water using fog catchers to pull the moisture directly from the air. The lichens find their own water the same way, by intercepting fog; 5. This species of vagrant lichen exists only in a small basin of the Altacama Desert, and is unrooted to the ground.
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