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Project Noah Nature School
Rhizocarpon geographicum
Taiga or areas newly exposed from glacial movements.
Used lichen diameter measurement to estimate timeframe of glacial recession as lichens have a fairly regular growth pattern in terms of establishment and time to expand
Spotted on Jul 6, 2008
Submitted on Feb 19, 2012
3 Comments
Thanks for the additional information :-)
This was not my research project, but one that I did grunt work for as an undergraduate. I never got his results before graduating, but they grow at a rate of ~.5mm per year. This lichen here is about 3cm across. We took measurements of hundreds of round lichens in the area. He made some conclusions based on averages of those numbers. As far as I know, his work is still ongoing!
So what was the rate of recession here?