Hiking up to the next plot…
Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane emissions, responsible for approximately one third of anthropogenic and natural emissions. Microbes are largely responsible for the methane emission in wetlands. Here I am proposing a field campaign where I sample the microbial communities of fifty soil samples taken at five different wetland pools adjacent to the Brush Creek confluence of the East River. I will use metagenome resolved metagenomics to study what microbes live in these wetlands and what their metabolic capacity is (in other words, what chemicals are they able to produce and consume). I am also interested in how these microbial processes with vary with distance from the drainage site, how these processes vary with depth, and how these processes vary from upstream to downstream. I anticipate that this analysis will be beneficial to other RMBL scientists, who are interested in understanding biogeochemical processes across ecosystems.