Glaciers store organic matter, which is released to alpine streams by glacial melt. In the light of global warming and disappearing glaciers worldwide, a team of limnologists around Tom Battin set out to explore the organic matter from 30 glaciers distributed throughout the Austrian Alps. In Nature Geoscience, Gabriel Singer, Christina Fasching and colleagues report about the unexpectedly high molecular diversity of organic matter stored in European glaciers and the contribution of this highly bioavailable organic carbon pool to microbial metabolism in downstream lotic ecosystems.
Alpine glaciers affects climate
