Underground Explorers

Northeastern United States forests play a key role in the global carbon sink, are projected to shift in forest composition and mycorrhizal association over the next century, and are at the forefront of rapid winter warming. Here, increasingly inconsistent winters drive frequent dry/wet cycles from snowmelt and leave soils vulnerable to freezing without an insulative snowpack. To study how these novel winter soil climate conditions could differentially impact fungal biodiversity, we will leverage a new climate change experiment that melts snow in a New Hampshire forest and an observational gradient ranging from centimeters- to meters-deep snowpack in forests across the region. The snowmelt experiment enables us to isolate the impacts of rapid winter climate change to elucidate how winter warming impacts mycorrhizal fungi. Data from the gradient study will both expand our scope of inference and generate valuable data to inform local conservation or management strategies (e.g. replanting efforts, selective harvesting). As over half of the Northern Hemisphere is characterized by seasonally snowy winters, this research will enhance our ability to predict how changing winters may broadly transform plant-mycorrhizal symbioses.