Establishment of a Biological Monitoring Site on the Eyjafjallajoekull Fissure, Iceland

15日，位于冰岛雷克雅未克东部的埃亚菲亚德拉冰川裂缝破裂，从1公里长的裂缝中喷出了熔岩。这一事件为我们提供了一个难得的机会，建立一个长期的生态监测点，研究火山熔岩流随时间的殖民化，了解新形成的岩石中碳循环的发展和生物岩石风化的早期过程。在这项紧急赠款中，我们寻求支助，以便开始对熔岩进行生物监测，并在熔岩流上建立一个微生物监测观测站。这项工作对地球科学的两个领域具有直接的重要性：1)了解新鲜的火山岩（每年通过风化作用从大气中吸收30%的二氧化碳）是如何被殖民的，以及生物群在其就位后不久在岩石风化中起什么作用；2)了解在地球上最广泛和最常见的新岩石基质火山岩上建立碳循环和活跃微生物群落的事件顺序。我们计划对该地点的熔岩进行初步取样和分析，并建立一个气象站，以便长期监测流动的生物群落。这项工作将为火山岩定植提供新的科学见解，并为建立长期微生物观测站提供新的定义方案和技术见解，我们可以将其应用于其他地方。

The Eyjafjallajoekull fissure, east of Reykjavik, Iceland, ruptured on April 15, spreading lava from 1 km-long opening. This event offers us a remarkable opportunity to establish a long-term ecological monitoring site to study the colonization of volcanic lava flows over time, to understand the development of a carbon cycle in newly formed rocks and the early processes of biological rock weathering. In this urgency grant we seek support to begin biological monitoring of the lava and to establish a microbial monitoring observatory on the flows. This work has direct importance for two areas of earth sciences: 1) understanding how fresh volcanic rocks, which account for 30% of carbon dioxide drawdown from the atmosphere each year through weathering, become colonized and what role a biota plays in rock weathering soon after its emplacement, 2) understanding the sequence of events for the establishment of a carbon cycle and active microbial communities on volcanic rocks, the most widespread and commonly formed new rock substrate on the Earth. We plan to carry out preliminary sampling and analysis of lava from of the site and to establish a weather station with a view to long-term monitoring of the biotic community on the flows. This work will yield new scientific insights into volcanic rock colonization and new defined protocols and technical insights into establishing long-term microbial observatories which we could apply elsewhere.