Pressing flowers between pages…
Plants do not live in isolation. Instead, they associate with multitudes of organisms, including mycorrhizal fungi belowground. These fungi acquire most plant nutrients and water in exchange for sugar. However, interactions between plants and mycorrhizal fungi may be disrupted as the climate changes. This project examines the potential for relationships between plants and mycorrhizal fungi to be disrupted as snowmelt timing shifts with global warming. We will examine the growth and composition of plants and fungi as well as soil nutrient concentrations in slopes and aspects with different snowmelt dates and in a three year long snowmelt manipulation. All data will be fed into an ecosystem model to scale our findings to the global scale.