Rapid warming in the Arctic is driving permafrost thaw, and new availability of formerly-frozen soil carbon for cycling and release to the atmosphere, representing a potentially large but poorly constrained accelerant of climate change. The National Science Foundation-funded EMergent Ecosystem Responses to ChanGE (EMERGE) Biology Integration Institute aims to develop a framework for understanding how different biological systems, such as those involved in permafrost thaw, interact over time by integrating research, training, and high-resolution field and laboratory measurements across 15 scientific subdisciplines–including ecology, physiology, genetics, biogeochemistry, remote sensing, and modeling–across 14 institutions, in order to understand ecosystem-climate feedbacks in Stordalen Mire, a thawing permafrost peatland in arctic Sweden.
The Ernakovich lab uses molecular and biogeochemical techniques to better understand the role that microbial community assembly plays in Stordalen Mire's ecosystem-climate feedbacks, focusing on ecological null modeling of assembly-processes, microbe-microbe and microbe-plant interactions, and a trait-based approach to predicting the consequences of assembly outcomes. Specific projects include:
- Understanding how wetland hydrology impacts the rate and types of dispersal microbial community assembly
- Identifying traits commonly associated with different mechanisms of microbial community assembly
- Measuring the activity of key microbially-derived enzymes in different stages of permafrost thaw
- Learning about the inter-seasonal and inter-annual tempo of microbial community assembly processes
More about EMERGE can be found on the EMERGE website:
