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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MicroArctic (Microorganisms in Warming Arctic Environments)

Teaser

Summary

The Arctic plays a key role in the Earthâ€™s climate system. Consequently, there is a need to estimate the impact that environmental change will have in this area. Global warming is predicted to be most pronounced at high latitudes and evidence gathered over the past 25 years suggests that this warming is already underway. Additionally, one third of the global carbon pool is stored in northern latitude ecosystems. Thus, there is considerable socio-economic interest in predicting how the carbon balance of these ecosystems will respond to ongoing climate warming. In this ITN, we aim to train the next generation of Arctic microbiology and biogeochemistry experts who, through their unique understanding of the fast changing Arctic environment and the factors that impact ecosystem and organism response to the warming Arctic, will be able to respond to the need for governance and leadership in various aspects related to public, policy and commercial interests.

MicroArctic fully fits with one of the societal challenges for Horizon 2020 (Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials). MicroArctic is within the Climate action remit â€“ microorganisms drive biogeochemical cycles, with current rates and scales of climate change. This function may change and there is an urgent need to understand the nature and scope of the biogeochemical change of the Arctic in response to warming. In MicroArctic, there will be unique opportunities for environmental protection and stewardship. Tourism, mining, ease of access, loss of Arctic sea ice all increase pressure on the Arctic environment. We have a real chance to manage change in this unique and relatively pristine environment (unlike other regions of the post-industrial era).

Work performed

Work packages 2-5 (Science) address key questions and gaps in our knowledge about the dynamics of nutrients and microbial communities in a range of Arctic habitats from snow/ice to developed Arctic soils.

WP2 specifically addresses the sources and both temporal and spatial variations of nutrient and microbial inputs across relevant Arctic ecosystems such as air, snow, ice and soil. The research projects outlined in this WP focus on aspects related to microbial colonization, environmental selection, community evolution, stability and biodiversity changes during the season in addition to nutrient deposition and transformations in both different environmental compartments and transition zones. Data collected during the melt season at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet have demonstrated an efficient cycling of nutrients by microbial communities with transformation and retention of nutrients in the organic phase on icy habitats. MicroArctic has found that there are significant differences in the sampling performance of different air samplers, especially for cold environments. Yet, input of airborne microbes has been determined and the bacterial biodiversity on aerial samples in Svalbard are similar to that described in other aerobiological studies from both polar and non-polar environments.

WP3 is combining stratigraphic analyses on molecular-level microbial community structure and functionality, as well as microscale geochemical and mineralogical quantifications applied on glacier forefield chronosequences and on permafrost deposits as an archive for glacial-interglacial changes. Results from this WP demonstrate thaw was found to stimulate methanogenesis in permafrost environments when an initial active community was present. Furthermore, based on the results obtained during winter fieldwork in Svalbard, bedrock weathering is hypothesised to be the dominant processes controlling the initial build-up of a labile nutrient pool in Arctic environments that feeds the microbial communities. Most of the work in this and other WPs is done using a suite of molecular tools. Bioinformatics is often the bottleneck in these studies because of the difficulties in dealing with the sheer amount of data generated by the new generation of sequencing technologies. A pipeline written in Python, R and bash scripting is currently publicly available at GitHub repository with a complete tutorial for public use under the license of General Public Use V3.0 and will be linked to the MicroArctic resource website page as well (https://github.com/Zohaib509/MetaFunctions).

In WP4, MicroArctic aims to evaluate changes at protein to population level in Arctic ecosystems that are associated with warming. This includes determinations of diversity, stress response, and interactions of fungi from glacial ice and soils, the glacier metatranscriptomic thermal response and cold-adaptation mechanisms of pyrimidine biosynthesis in psychrophilic organisms, analyses of the composition, activity and fate of cyanobacterial and bacterial populations in natural and simulated habitat types in the warming Arctic. For instance, plasmid-mediated gene transfer is an important and ubiquitous mechanism of bacterial adaptation yet the role of plasmids in Arctic microbial communities has received little attention. Of the metagenomes from Arctic habitats and other environments used for comparison, the relative abundance of plasmid-related sequences involved in both plasmid replication and conjugation were over orders of magnitude higher in snow metagenomes than any other metagenome tested.

WP5 explores both socio-economic opportunities for development and threats to environment in the warming Arctic and encompasses three ESR projects which also interact heavily with the other science-based WPs. Here ESRs have been looking at glacier ecosystem services by investigating the biotechnology potential of the Arctic cryospheric biome, developing bioinformatics approaches to mine dat

Final results

A number of the societal implications of the project are linked to the outreach activities performed to date which have made the general public more aware of the challenges and necessity of work in the Arctic. In their first 2 years, MicroArctic ESRs have participated in over 35 outreach events targeting people of all ages and all backgrounds. ESRs have already engaged with the public at events such as school presentations, outreach forums, open days at their host institutes and European science nights, and they are learning to adapt their discourse to their audience. They run both twitter and facebook accounts which are open to the public and the MicroArctic website provides biannual progress reports for individual ESR research projects. ESRs have also been active in international conferences and have begun publishing in peer reviewed journals. Over this first reporting period, MicroArctic has already achieved many of its intended impact factors which were: Investigate, Train and Communicate and by the end of their research projects, ESRs will be well prepared for interactions with both specialist and non-specialist stakeholders.