Arctic carbon under threat from climate extremes: Impacts of extreme climatic events on soil carbon and microbial communities

北极碳受到极端气候的威胁：极端气候事件对土壤碳和微生物群落的影响

• 批准号: 2277950
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2277950
• 关键词: Arctic; carbon; under; threat; climate

Extreme climatic events can have far greater impacts on ecosystems than gradual climate change. This is particularly apparent in the Arctic, where widespread damage from extreme events is causing large-scale die-back to tundra ecosystems and driving the phenomena known as "Arctic Browning". This die-back in tundra ecosystems caused by extreme climatic events is in stark contrast to the previous 30 year trend of increasing plant growth arising from gradual warming. While recent research on Arctic browning has focused on the very visible damage impacts seen above ground on plants, almost nothing is known of the impacts below ground on soil carbon and soil microbes. This is a major omission given arctic soils contain vast stores of carbon, and initial work suggests the release of this could be greatly affected by extreme climatic events, with consequences for feedback to climate.This PhD will study the impacts of extreme climatic events on soil carbon cycling and fluxes in arctic ecosystems, with methods including measurements of soil carbon, assessment of CO2 fluxes using infra-red gas analysis, and C tracing techniques. It will also use state-of-the-art molecular ecology approaches (e.g. Illumina MiSeq, Nanopore, and associated bioinformatics) to determine changes in the biodiversity and functioning of the soil microbes that cycle carbon.

极端气候事件对生态系统的影响可能比逐渐的气候变化大得多。这在北极尤其明显，极端事件造成的广泛破坏正在造成冻土带生态系统的大规模死亡，并推动了被称为“北极褐化”的现象。这种由极端气候事件造成的冻土带生态系统的消亡与之前30年来由于逐渐变暖而导致的植物生长增加的趋势形成了鲜明对比。虽然最近关于北极褐变的研究主要集中在地上对植物的非常明显的损害影响上，但对地下对土壤碳和土壤微生物的影响几乎一无所知。这是一个重大的遗漏，因为北极土壤中含有大量的碳，初步工作表明，这些碳的释放可能会受到极端气候事件的极大影响，从而对气候反馈产生影响。本博士将研究极端气候事件对北极生态系统土壤碳循环和通量的影响，方法包括测量土壤碳，使用红外气体分析评估二氧化碳通量，以及碳追踪技术。它还将使用最先进的分子生态学方法(例如Illumina MiSeq、纳米孔和相关的生物信息学)来确定循环碳的土壤微生物的生物多样性和功能的变化。