Pressing flowers between pages…
NON-TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Mountainous ecosystems are currently experiencing a lot of change in their water inputs. With the dominant water source, snowpack, decreasing and melting earlier. This change in the primary water source not only influences the aboveground functioning of the ecosystem, but also the belowground part as well. The belowground ecosystem is comprised of microbes that breakdown organic matter and plant roots that are growing to access crucial nutrients and water. Both the microbes and roots respire CO2 when they are conducting these functions in the belowground ecosystem. Our research aims to understand how changes in moisture inputs, such as changes in snow depth and monsoon rains influences these belowground ecosystem up an elevation gradient in the East River Watershed, near Crested Butte Colorado. We will quantify the CO2 produced by both the microbes and the roots up the elevational gradient and see how each respond to environmental changes within and between years. To do this, we will combine continuous soil CO2 measurements, spatially distributed soil surface CO2 measurements and radiocarbon methods which will enable us to separate the plant and microbial sources of the CO2. These methods will allow us to identify how these two sources of CO2 vary in space and time. These measurements will be paired with both biological measurements of forest green up, tree growth, microbial activity, and environmental measurements of air and soil temperature, soil moisture, and snowpack melt. These sampling sites will be taken in the two dominant forest types, Spruce/Fir, and Aspen in the East River Watershed. Our work is motivated by our overarching hypothesis that separately quantifying how belowground microbe and roots are influenced by the changing water inputs, is necessary for understanding the belowground forested ecosystems resilience to a changing environment.