01966nas a2200253   4500008004100000022001400041245010100055210006900156260001200225490000700237520119400244653001701438653001301455653002401468653000901492653000901501653002101510100002301531700002401554700002201578700002001600700002101620856007101641       2024                        eng d  a1523-043000aMeasuring and modelling functional moat area in perennially ice-covered Lake Fryxell, Antarctica0 aMeasuring and modelling functional moat area in perennially icec  c10/20240 v563 a<p>The perennially ice-covered lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs), Antarctica, are an important reservoir of liquid water in an arid and largely frozen environment. During the austral summer, the margins of these ice covers melt, forming a &ldquo;moat&rdquo; of liquid water and thin ice, allowing exchange between lake waters and the atmosphere to occur and serving as an interface between lake, soil, and stream ecosystems. The size of these moats varies from year to year. Here, we have established the first published record of moat area changes at MDVs&rsquo; Lake Fryxell through time using manual traces of the moat as observed via satellite imagery. We have also tested a semi-automated approach for measuring moat area and found that it consistently underestimated the manual record, which we suspect may be due to the lower spatial resolution of images used in this versus the manual approach. Finally, we developed a predictive model based on readily available climate data, allowing moat area to be predicted beyond the limits of the satellite-based records. We found that functional moat area varies annually, potentially influencing ecosystem processes in the moats.</p>10aLake Fryxell10alake ice10aMcMurdo Dry Valleys10amoat10aNDWI10apredictive model1 aStone, Michael, S.1 aSalvatore, Mark, R.1 aDugan, Hilary, A.1 aMyers, Madeline1 aDoran, Peter, T.  uhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15230430.2024.2406626