And from Austria
Here.
But new research is standing that assumption on its head, finding microbes in freshly deglaciated terrain that is devoid of vegetation. The latest study, by Richard D. Bardgett of Lancaster University in England and colleagues and published in Biology Letters, shows what those microbes are feeding on: ancient carbon.
The researchers studied soils near the Ödenwinkelkees glacier, high in the Austrian Alps, that has been retreating by an average of 35 feet per year since 1850 (for reasons that have nothing to do with global climate change). They sampled plots that had been glacier-free for as long as 149 years and as short as 3 years.
Nothing to do with it? So when facts go against political dogma, it's simply dismissed is it? How interesting.
Dr. Bardgett said the youngest sites were hostile environments, mostly rock and gravel with little soil. “We would assume that these are sterile places,†he said. “Yet they have small but very diverse microbial communities.â€
These bacteria and fungi were consuming what little organic carbon there was in the surrounding soil. The researchers found that the carbon was on average about 7,000 years old and consisted mostly of “recalcitrant†plant matter like lignin that is difficult to break down. Only in plots that had been exposed for 50 years or more did the researchers find that the microbes were consuming carbon from recent vegetation.
Again 7,000 years ago is very recent. The fact that plant matter is found means that ice wasn't there AT ALL. This was a lush fertile place in the not too distant past.