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Predicting the Responses of Soil Nitrite-Oxidizers to Multi-Factorial Global Change: A Trait-Based Approach
Soil microbial diversity is huge and a few grams of soil contain more bacterial taxa than there are bird species on Earth. This high diversity often makes predicting the responses of soil bacteria to environmental change intractable and restricts our capacity to predict the responses of soil functions to global […]
Fire‑severity effects on plant–fungal interactions after a novel tundra wildfire disturbance: implications for arctic shrub and tree migration
Background: Vegetation change in high latitude tundra ecosystems is expected to accelerate due to increased wild-fire activity. High-severity fires increase the availability of mineral soil seedbeds, which facilitates recruitment, yet fire also alters soil microbial composition, which could significantly impact seedling establishment. Results: We investigated the effects of fire severity on soil biota […]
The effect of nutrient deposition on bacterial communities in Arctic tundra soil
The microbial communities of high-latitude ecosystems are expected to experience rapid changes over the next century due to climate warming and increased deposition of reactive nitrogen, changes that will likely affect microbial community structure and function. In moist acidic tundra (MAT) soils on the North Slope of the Brooks Range, […]
Quantifying fire severity, carbon, and nitrogen emissions in Alaska’s boreal forest
The boreal region stores a large proportion of the world’s terrestrial carbon (C) and is subject to high-intensity, stand-replacing wildfires that release C and nitrogen (N) stored in biomass and soils through combustion. While severity and extent of fires drives overall emissions, methods for accurately estimating fire severity are poorly […]
The carbon budget of the northern cryosphere region
The northern cryosphere is undergoing substantial warming of permafrost and loss of sea ice. Release of stored carbon to the atmosphere in response to this change has the potential to affect the global climate system. Studies indicate that the northern cryosphere has been not only a substantial sink for atmospheric […]
Relationships among precipitation regime, nutrient availability, and carbon turnover in tropical rain forests
The effect of high precipitation regime in tropical forests is poorly known despite indications of its potentially negative effects on nutrient availability and carbon (C) cycling. Our goal was to determine if there was an effect of high rainfall on nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) availability and indexes of C […]
Carbon loss from an unprecedented Arctic tundra wildfire
Arctic tundra soils store large amounts of carbon (C) in organic soil layers hundreds to thousands of years old that insulate, and in some cases maintain, permafrost soilsl,2. Fire has been largely absent from most of this biome since the early Holocene epoch3, but its frequency and extent are increasing, […]
Effects of elevated nitrogen and temperature on carbon and nitrogen dynamics in Alaskan arctic and boreal soils
Plant productivity in upland tundra and boreal forest is demonstrably limited by nitrogen (N) and indirect evidence from field studies suggests that decomposition by soil microbes may be similarly limited. As climate warms at high latitudes, understanding the response of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition to increased soil temperature may […]
Ecology: Nitrogen from the deep
Ecosystems acquire nitrogen from the atmosphere, but this source can’t account for the large nitrogen capital of some systems. The finding that bedrock can also act as a nitrogen source may help solve the riddle.