plant life

“We were pleasantly surprised,” says Katie Tilford, interim executive director for the Theodore Payne Foundation, a nonprofit nursery and education center for native California plant life.

It’s a sandy loam mixed with lightweight volcanic aggregate to provide the volume and moisture needed to support plant life while reducing the weight on the structure and allowing for easy drainage.

“Of course, with this increase in plant life, we’re going to see increased soil formation, and the risk of colonization by non-native and potentially invasive species grows considerably as a result. Precisely what the Peninsula will look like in, say, one-hundred years’ time is difficult to say, but we can safely suggest that Antarctica’s environmental future is at risk.”

The way the rubbish was discarded at the sites endangered the "health of humans, animals and plant life", they added.

Early on in the project she spoke to a forensic botanist about visible changes in plant life at burial sites and she uses this knowledge to “get a feel for where things were disturbed or otherwise slightly different”.