clipped from: www.sciencedaily.com   

Science Daily — From the deepest seafloor to the highest mountain, from the hottest region to the cold Antarctic plateau, environments labelled as extreme are numerous on Earth and they present a wide variety of features and characteristics.

Investigating life processes in extreme environments not only can provide hints on how life first appeared and survived on Earth (as early earth was an extreme environment) but it can also give indication for the search for life on other planets.  

To examine these issues and other matters the European Science Foundation (ESF) has published a 58-page report Investigating Life in Extreme Environments – A European Perspective. Among other issues, the report has stated how global changes in the recent decades have turned some environments setting into becoming “extreme” conditions for the normal ecosystems (e.g. acidification of the oceans).