Impact of snow cover conditions on microbial communities in boreal forest soil

Global circulation models predict that high latitude areas will become wetter and warmer, especially during autumn, winter and spring. Although air temperatures will increase, changes in soil temperatures might be not as direct as they depend on the insulating snow cover. Snow melting, formation of ice layers within the snowpack and ground ice encasement will lead to deeper soil frost, more frequent soil freeze-thaw cycles and delay in soil thawing in the spring. Warm spells in winter have the potential to stimulate plant metabolic activity, leading to higher desiccation stress or depletion of C and N pools depending on the conditions. This project studies the effects of changes in winter conditions to plant and microbial communities in boreal forest. Microbial community structure under different snow cover conditions are characterized by amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes and fungal ITS region on Ion Torrent platform.