Soil fungal community (Raisduoddar OTCF grazing experiment)

In this study we tested how four years of experimental warming and fertilization affected organic soil fungal communities in subarctic tundra areas with decadal history of either heavy or light reindeer grazing. The study consisted of eight replicates of control (Ctrl), warming (W), fertilization (F) and combined warming and fertilization (WF) treatments under two contrasting long-term grazing regimes. Warming was implemented with open-top chambers (OTCs) set to the plots from June to July, and fertilization by dissolving ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3, equivalent to 10 g N m-2) to the plots early in the growing season, yearly. In July 2013, composite soil samples were collected from the organic horizon, homogenized, and characterized for fungal community composition in duplicate samples using high-throughput sequencing of ITS2 rDNA region.