Climate Change Affecting Snow Covered Ecosystems

 By: Jacqueline Martinez

Graphs from the study that demonstrate the correlations of bacteria, fungi, soil carbon to nitrogen ratio, and soil pH, which are according to the snowmelt timing.

Due to climate change affecting the warmth of the planet, there are side effects to this, which are the earlier summer temperatures that cause snow to melt earlier. Since snow begins to melt at an earlier date than expected, this also creates change to the soil and its microbial communities because it is being exposed sooner especially in alpine areas. Moreover, the shift in temperatures at different dates allows the soil to respond to these changes accordingly with the circumstances, which may cause a disturbance at an ecological level. The study conducted by Broadbent and colleagues had used plots of land to demonstrate the effects of early snowmelts happening during the spring where there was three manipulation treatments: snow removal, snow addition, and untreated control treatment. The findings ended up showing the correlation of the change of when the spring snow melting happens and nitrogen cycling. Furthermore, the findings showed there could be future changes in both carbon and nitrogen in snow covered areas and will affect the natural order of things in an ecosystem, such as plant growth.

Journal Article:

Broadbent, A. A. D., Snell, H. S. K., Michas, A., Pritchard, W. J., Newbold, L., Cordero, I., Goodall, T., Shallhart, N., Kaufmann, R., Griffiths, R. I., Schloter, M., Bahn, M., & Bardgett, R. D. (2021). Climate change alters temporal dynamics of alpine soil microbial functioning and biogeochemical cycling via earlier snowmelt. The ISME Journal, 15, 2264–2275. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-021-00922-0.