At the top of the Earth, the northernmost stretch of land a person can stand on is Inuit Qeqertaat, also named Kaffeklubben Island by early 20th century Danish explorers. The region is a dark gray stretch of gravel on the northern coast of Greenland where land slowly gives way to frozen sea ice.
To find what lives amid these rocky soils, climate change researchers and National Geographic Explorers Brian Buma and Jeff Kerby and their team embarked on a journey to survey the region. There, they found a common species of moss (Tortula mucronifolia), the world’s northernmost plant, and a yellow and lime-green Arctic poppy (Papaver radicatum), growing just a few inches south of the moss.
On the nearby mainland, Greenlandic archaeologist Aka Simonsen discovered a ring of roughly 700-year-old Inuit stones, which may be the northernmost archaeological remains.
The research team left their own mark on the mainland coast, staking plots and recording the vegetation they contained to create a highly detailed digital map of the area they surveyed. Information collected from this trip will be the first data logs in what Buma and Kerby hope will be a long timeline of research in the far northern region.
Here, above the Arctic Circle, the planet is warming four times faster than anywhere else on Earth. Changes here will have ripple effects across the globe, which is why the team braved harsh conditions to find what lives on the edge.
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