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Psychrophiles: from Biodiversity to Biotechnology pp 31–50Cite as

Bacteria in Snow and Glacier Ice

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By definition, the cryosphere is the portion of the Earth where water is in solid form as snow or ice. It includes vast areas of sea ice, freshwater ice, glaciers, ice sheets, snow cover and permafrost. Because of the extremely harsh climatic conditions, these frozen environments had been considered for a long time to be devoid of life or serving merely as repositories for wind-transported microorganisms trapped in the ice (Cowan and Tow 2004). However, the increasing number of recent studies on the microbial ecology and diversity of natural ice samples have changed this view. Although still limited, they have shown that permanently frozen environments harbor abundant, live and diverse microorganisms that may be detected and recovered by cultivation. Priscu and Christner (2004) calculated the total number of bacterial cells in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to be 9.61×1025, which corresponds to a significant carbon pool of 2.65×10−3 Pg (1 Pg = 1015 g) and represents a considerable reservoir of microbial diversity. At present, the cryosphere is important not only as an integral part of the global climate system but as one of the major habitable ecosystems of Earth's biosphere and as the best analogue for the search of extraterrestrial life. This chapter presents the current knowledge about the detection, diversity, survival and activity of bacteria in snow and glacier ice. Because this topic has been previously reviewed (Priscu and Christner 2004; Cowan and Tow 2004; Priscu et al. 2007), the focus here will be to outline major earlier findings and to present the most recent advances in glacier ice and snow microbiology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16803, USA

    Vanya Miteva

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  1. Vanya Miteva
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Microbiology, University of Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 25, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria

    Rosa Margesin  & Franz Schinner  & 

  2. Laboratory of Biochemistry, University of Liège, Institute of Chemistry B6, 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Jean-Claude Marx  & Charles Gerday  & 

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Miteva, V. (2008). Bacteria in Snow and Glacier Ice. In: Margesin, R., Schinner, F., Marx, JC., Gerday, C. (eds) Psychrophiles: from Biodiversity to Biotechnology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74335-4_3

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