Anthropogenic climate change is causing observable changes in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean including increased air and ocean temperatures, glacial melt leading to sea-level rise and a reduction in salinity, and changes to freshwater water availability on land. These changes impact local Antarctic ecosystems and the Earth's climate system. The Antarctic has experienced significant past environmental change, including cycles of glaciation over the Quaternary Period (the past ~2.6 million years). Understanding Antarctica's paleoecosystems, and the corresponding paleoenvironments and climates that have shaped them, provides insight into present day ecosystem change, and importantly, helps constrain model projections of future change. Biological archives such as extant moss beds and peat profiles, biological proxies in lake and marine sediments, vertebrate animal colonies, and extant terrestrial and benthic marine invertebrates, complement other Antarctic paleoclimate archives by recording the nature and rate of past ecological change, the paleoenvironmental drivers of that change, and constrain current ecosystem and climate models. These archives provide invaluable information about terrestrial ice-free areas, a key location for Antarctic biodiversity, and the continental margin which is important for understanding ice sheet dynamics. Recent significant advances in analytical techniques (e.g., genomics, biogeochemical analyses) have led to new applications and greater power in elucidating the environmental records contained within biological archives. Paleoecological and paleoclimate discoveries derived from biological archives, and integration with existing data from other paleoclimate data sources, will significantly expand our understanding of past, present, and future ecological change, alongside climate change, in a unique, globally significant region.

中文翻译：

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新兴的生物档案可以揭示南极洲的生态和气候变化

人为气候变化正在南极洲和南大洋引起可观察到的变化，包括气温和海洋温度升高、冰川融化导致海平面上升和盐度降低，以及陆地淡水可用水量发生变化。这些变化影响当地的南极生态系统和地球气候系统。南极过去经历了重大的环境变化，包括第四纪（过去约 260 万年）的冰川周期。了解南极洲的古生态系统，以及塑造它们的相应古环境和气候，可以深入了解当今的生态系统变化，重要的是，有助于限制未来变化的模型预测。生物档案，如现存的苔藓床和泥炭剖面，湖泊和海洋沉积物、脊椎动物群落以及现存的陆地和底栖海洋无脊椎动物中的生物替代物，通过记录过去生态变化的性质和速度、这种变化的古环境驱动因素，并限制当前的生态系统和气候模型，补充其他南极古气候档案. 这些档案提供了关于陆地无冰区、南极生物多样性的关键位置和大陆边缘的宝贵信息，这对于了解冰盖动态非常重要。分析技术（例如，基因组学、生物地球化学分析）的最新重大进展带来了新的应用，并在阐明生物档案中包含的环境记录方面发挥了更大的作用。来自生物档案的古生态和古气候发现，