The microbial of alpine ecosystems in a changing winter climate

Winter conditions are changing, with rapid reductions in northern-hemisphere snowcover. This is of huge importance for
alpine ecosystems, which are disproportionately biodiverse, and considered a sentinel for climate change due to observed rapid
changes in plant communities. However, belowground diversity and biogeochemistry of soil organisms is poorly reconciled,
hindering our ability to predict the impacts of change to the whole ecosystem. This project will explore snow-cover gradients
and how they shape the microbial ecology of the European alpine. It will ask how we can predict the impacts of change
through a combination of exciting field surveys and sampling, interrogation of the microbial community, and an in-situ
transplantation experiment.