Monitoring Underground Disturbances (MUD): Creating a Microbial BioBank for Long-Term Monitoring of Extreme Weather Impacts on Forests

2022年2月，英国经历了连续的暴风雨尤妮斯和富兰克林，导致英国各地森林中的树木死亡和连根拔起。虽然极端天气对地上的这些影响在视觉上是显而易见的，而且相对容易量化，但我们对地下土壤微生物如何对同样的干扰做出反应知之甚少。然而，这些微生物可能是森林恢复的关键，因为植物病原体或有益的互惠共生体(菌根)的丰富程度的变化将影响哪些树重建以及重建的速度。我们假设，森林微生物间接受到风暴的影响，这是由于树木连根拔起时土壤的物理扰动，以及树木树冠间隙下森林小气候的变化。为了验证这一预测，我们将对受尤尼斯和富兰克林影响的松树、云杉、橡树和山毛榉林中的森林状况进行大规模调查，将树木倒塌和树冠缺口的测量与土壤采样相结合。土壤样本将被存档在伦敦帝国理工学院的长期生物库中，并可以用DNA序列技术进行分析，以确定每个样本中存在哪些种类的微生物。生物库将随着时间的推移而增长，因为研究人员一次又一次地回到相同的森林地点，以监测森林再生时微生物群落的变化。这将使我们能够确定哪些类型的微生物可能有助于森林恢复，并更好地了解哪些类型的森林干扰对地下的影响最大。我们还将对我们的一些地点出现的数千种土壤真菌物种进行初步表征，提供对极端天气隐藏的生态系统影响的即时洞察。

In February 2022, the UK experienced back-to-back windstorms Eunice and Franklin, which killed and uprooted trees in forests across the UK. Although these aboveground impacts of extreme weather are visually obvious and relatively easy to quantify, we know much less about how soil microbes belowground respond to the same disturbances. Yet these microbes may hold the key to forest recovery, as changes in the abundance of plant pathogens or beneficial mutualists (mycorrhizae) will influence which trees re-establish, and how quickly. We hypothesize that forest microbes are indirectly affected by storms due to physical disturbance of the soil when trees uproot, and changes in the forest microclimate under tree canopy gaps. To test this prediction, we will conduct large-scale surveys of forest condition in stands of pine, spruce, oak, and beech that were impacted by Eunice and Franklin, pairing measurements of tree falls and canopy gaps with soil sampling. Soil samples will be archived in a long-term 'BioBank' at Imperial College London, and can be analysed with DNA sequence technology to identify which species of microbes are present in each sample. The BioBank will grow over time as researchers return to the same forest sites again and again to monitor shifts in microbial communities as the forest regenerates. This will allow us to determine which types of microbes might facilitate forest recovery, and better understand which kinds of forest disturbance have the biggest belowground impacts. We will also conduct a preliminary characterization of the thousands of soil fungal species that occur across a subset of our sites, providing an immediate insight into the hidden ecosystem effects of extreme weather.