Page 36 - University of Pretoria RESEARCH REVIEW 2018

Monitoring change
in Arctic tundra microbiomes
Don Cowan, Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, and CMEG
Polar regions are of increasing significance to the world’s future: global warming may add huge volumes of fresh water from terrestrial glaciers into the world’s oceans, and warming of permafrost could release billions of tonnes of stored carbon, as the greenhouse gasses methane and carbon dioxide.
Professor Don Cowan, Director
of the UP Centre of Microbial Ecology and Genomics and NRF A1-rated researcher, moved from
one pole to the other in 2018. While his 20-year research programme on Antarctic terrestrial soil microbiology continues, he has recently established a new research collaboration in the Canadian High Arctic.
It was triggered by a move, in late 2017, of long-time collaborator, Professor Ian Hogg, from the University of Waikato (NZ) to the
new Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS), sited in Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island and on the northern shoreline on the Northwest Passage.
CHARS, operated by Polar Knowledge Canada, has been designed and
built to optimise innovation in Arctic science and technology, to welcome visitors, and to provide researchers with the accommodation and technical services they need. The innovative facility is designed to support a wide range of research needs – from ecosystem monitoring to DNA
analysis – where Inuit principles and indigenous knowledge are recognised as fundamentally important to the co- creation of new knowledge.*
Collaborator Eric Bottos (left) and CHARS technical officer, Bryan Vandenbrink recovering permafrost cores.
* https://www.canada.ca/en/polar-knowledge/CHARScampus.html
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