Counting marmots…
Atmospheric warming is disproportionate across the Earth's surface and tundra ecosystems are experiencing a faster rate of temperature increase than other parts of the globe. These environments store a significant amount of carbon that, under climatic change, has the potential to be released into the atmosphere, positively feeding back to global temperature rise. Soil microbes regulate ecosystem processes that determine the soil carbon response and therefore, understanding how warming and warming-related changes affect the soil microbial community can improve predictions of ecosystem functions and services under climatic change. This project will analyze microbial processes in control and experimental plots at RMBL by taking advantage of preexisting experiment infrastructure established by the WARM project. The independent and combined treatments of warming and changing plant composition in WARM will allow us to examine the direct and indirect effects of warming on soil microbial function.