What seemed impossible only a few weeks ago has finally happened – the snow has melted! It’s true! The snow is gone from the forest, the soils are soft and very wet, and slowly but surely the trees are making their way to full canopy! This ephemeral period of time between snowmelt and leaf out by trees is really interesting from an ecology and biogeochemistry perspective. As scientists, we are really interested to know how all the important components of the ecosystem start working together at the end of winter so that by the middle of summer, they are a complex coupled system that is completely in sync (most of the time…). Does the early part of the season impact how things will go later on?
To get at some of these questions, I’ve been back out in the field this week sampling roots from our climate change plots. My goal is to assess whether the roots in all our different treatments are equally healthy as the growing season begins. If the temperature manipulations over the winter have harmed some of the roots more than others, this might impact how well the trees grow over the next few months.
- Root samples in tubes waiting to be measured.
- Clean roots ready to be analyzed.
- Sorting roots from fresh soil samples in the lab.
- Look at the beautiful leaf litter. It feels wonderful to walk on soft ground again.
- The snow is gone from our forest plots!