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

2022年2月，英国经历了接连的飓风“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。虽然这些极端天气对地面的影响在视觉上很明显，而且相对容易量化，但我们对地下土壤微生物如何应对同样的干扰知之甚少。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共生菌（菌根）丰度的变化将影响树木重建的种类和速度。我们假设，由于树木连根拔起时土壤的物理扰动以及树冠间隙下森林小气候的变化，森林微生物会间接受到风暴的影响。为了验证这一预测，我们将对受到尤尼斯和富兰克林影响的松树、云杉、橡树和山毛榉林分进行大规模的森林状况调查，将树木倒塌和冠层间隙的测量与土壤采样相结合。土壤样本将被长期保存在伦敦帝国理工学院的“生物银行”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微生物种类。随着时间的推移，随着研究人员一次又一次地回到相同的森林地点，监测森林再生过程中微生物群落的变化，生物库将不断发展。这将使我们能够确定哪种类型的微生物可能促进森林恢复，并更好地了解哪种森林干扰对地下影响最大。我们还将对数千种土壤真菌物种进行初步表征，这些真菌物种发生在我们的一个子集中，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.