Featured image: Hummocks of moss cover Ardley Island off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Credit: Dan Charman

A fast-warming region of Antarctica is getting greener with shocking speed. Satellite imagery of the region reveals that the area covered by plants increased by almost 14 times over 35 years — a trend that will spur rapid change of Antarctic ecosystems.

“It’s the beginning of dramatic transformation,” says Olly Bartlett, a remote-sensing specialist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, and an author of the study, published today in Nature Geoscience, that reports these results.