Group Members: Harmeet Kaur, Ayelet Segal, Pabvitraa Ramcharan

  1. Xianjin He, Enqing Hou, Yang Liu, and  Dazhi Wen. 2016. “Altitudinal patterns and controls of plant and soil nutrient concentrations and stoichiometry in subtropical China”. Scientific Reports. April 7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823659/

     The authors of this paper work at the Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, China. All of the authors have written other research papers regarding nutrients found in the soil and food in China and in other regions and about different effects of climate change around the world. This study was published in Scientific Reports Journal, which is part of the larger Nature International Journal of Science. The head of Scientific Reports is Anna Treadway who is a senior publisher with over 16 years of experience publishing scientific research.  The researchers in this study determined the effect altitude has on certain nutrients found in subtropical China’s forest floor litter, fine roots, mineral soil, and soil microbial biomass. They tested for Carbon, Nitrogen and Phosphorous and found that while Carbon and Nitrogen concentrations increased as the altitude got higher, Phosphorus levels decreased. The article also mentioned how mountains are a great indicator of telling how altitude affects soil because of the leveled terrain. Additionally, they discussed the importance of climate change at different levels, like the difference in the number of organisms found in certain areas. Precipitation can cause a species to thrive allowing for certain vegetation to grow and be a source of nutrition, but weather can also impede growth if the soil is too cold or too warm. Their conclusion was that all ecosystems differ and therefore the effect altitude has on soil nutrition is different everywhere. This is a helpful source as we are focusing on NYC specifically and not a broader region. They also provided four informative graphs showing the relationship between the temperature of the soil, the pH of the soil, water content, and water absorption in the soil when graphed with the altitude. Although this data does not apply to NYC, it shows how research on this topic has been done before in different regions and it gives insight into the different aspects we should consider before posing a hypothesis about altitude’s effect.
  2. Vigdis Torsvik, LiseØvreås. 2002. “Microbial Diversity and Function in Soil: From Genes to Ecosystems”. June 1. Elsevier: Current Opinion in Microbiology 5, Issue 3, pg 240-245. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1369-5274(02)00324-7Elsevier is a peer reviewed science journal with different subcategories including Microbiology. The Editors in chief are Judith Armitage, a British Biochemist at Oxford University and Virginia L Miller, who works for the Microbiology and Immunology Department of University of North Carolina.  The authors of the paper, work in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Bergen, Norway. The purpose of their research was to explore the diversity of the microorganisms found in soil, as they believed that a lot is still unknown and needs to be discovered. They mentioned that in one gram of soil 10 billion microorganisms of thousands of different species can exist. Soil is very complex and has a lot of different diffing characteristics. Microorganisms interact and affect each other just as much as they interact with their surroundings. For example, they found that microbial diversity in areas with small soil particles was higher than that in areas with larger soil particles. Competitive interactions also control microbial community structure and diversity as they all need to fight to sustain themselves. This source can be helpful in supplying us with some background information about how microorganisms interact without the added variable of altitude difference. Before we can make any conclusions we first have to learn the basics of the diversity of microorganism diversity and how they act.
  3. Janna Pietikäinen, Marie Pettersson, Erland Bååth. 2005. “Comparison of temperature effects on soil respiration and bacterial and fungal growth rates”. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 52, Issue 1. Pg 49-58. March 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.femsec.2004.10.002All of the authors of this paper work at the Department of Microbial Ecology in Lund University, Sweden. The publishing journal, FEMS Microbiology, publishes a wide range of articles about microorganisms in soil, aquatic and atmospheric environments. The Editor in Chief, Max Häggblom, works at the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University, New Jersey. This research was specific and was directed at the effect temperature has on fungi and bacteria in particular. The researchers measured the respiration rate and growth rate of both organisms at various temperatures and different starting pHs of soil. Altitude is directly related to temperature so this would help support our research. Fungi and Bacteria showed higher growth rates at temperatures around 25–30 °C. The opposite was seen at lower temperatures. The respiration rate increased over the temperature range showing the highest value at around 45 °C. This source can be helpful in our research if we want to do a subcategory on just bacteria or fungi and narrow our views.  We will not be using their data, however this is a good starting point to review others work regarding a similar topic and how they went about their experiment to get accurate results.
  4. Bohlen, Patrick J., Peter M. Groffman, Charles T. Driscoll, Timothy J. Fahey, and Thomas G. Siccama. 2001. “Plant-Soil-Microbial Interactions in a Northern Hardwood Forest.” Ecology 82, no. 4: 965-78. doi:10.2307/2679896.This peer reviewed article has multiple authors who are  associated with an institute or university.  Bohlen is associated with the Agro-Ecology Research Center, Groffman with the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Driscoll with Syracuse University (the department of civil and environmental engineering), Fahey with Cornell University (department of natural resources), and Siccama with Yale University. They conducted their own experiment, in which they were able to compare various factors to microbial biomass such as elevation. Some of the findings they found were that microbial biomass can be useful as an indicator in the differences in N cycling within ecosystem and that different horizons affect microbial biomasses. They also found that there are greater rates of N cycling at higher elevations. Since our project focuses on seeing how or if elevation affects the abundance and diversity of microorganisms, this will be a good resource to incorporate into our data and as a way to understand our data as well. We can also find a way to incorporate N cycling to our project.
  5. McGuire, Krista L., et al. 2013. “Digging the New York City Skyline: Soil Fungal Communities in Green Roofs and City Parks.” PLOS ONE. March 1. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058020.There are many authors of this source, but they are all associated with institutions such as the Barnard College of Columbia, Columbia University, Fordham University, and the Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences. They also belong to the department of biology and/or the department of environmental science.  This article focused on comparing soil fungal community mediums on green roofs in New York City to the soil microbial composition in parks within the boroughs. They found that green roofs had multiple diverse fungal communities; however, there were a greater diversity in the microbial communities in the parks. Overall, their results suggest that fungi can play a role in supporting green roofs. This source is useful for our project because, even though we might not be using their data, we are able to understand more about the topic and the research that is already out there. The source even acknowledges elevation as a factor in microbial diversity.
  6. Delgado-Baquerizo, Manuel, Angela M. Oliverio, Tess E. Brewer, Alberto Benavent-Gonzalez, David J. Eldridge, Richard D. Bardgett, Fernando T. Maestre, Brajesh K. Singh, and Noah Fierer. (2018). “A Global Atlas of the Dominant Bacteria Found in Soil.” Science 359, no. 6373. January 19: 320-25. doi:10.1126/science.aap9516.Noah Fierer is a Ph.D fellow and professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Colorado. He, as well as a team of post doctorate, graduate students,  and research technicians known as “Fierer Lab,” attempt to investigate and discover the structures of microbial communities in order to understand their purposes. Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, for example, is a postdoctoral student for the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. He specializes in fields such as soil microbial ecology and terrestrial ecosystem ecology. Along with his and the vast experience of the team, Fierer Lab explains the core functions of microorganisms and why they believe it is important to identify many of these unknown microbes in the soil. For a total of 237 locations within six continents, which yields thousands of unidentified microbes, the researchers catalogued each new microbe and attempted to understand the functionality and commonness of each one. The scientists found that in half of the soil, only 2% of the bacteria were accounted for and sought to create a list of 511 dominant unknown microbes, such as those of proteobacteria. This article would allow us to understand the true functions of soil microbes, which phylotypes are dominant, and how they benefit the ecosystem and humans, such as the fact that they impact our food by creating fertile soils, growing plants, and consuming and releasing carbon dioxide. It would also help us in understanding why some soil microbes are found in certain areas and why others are not. This eliminates the unanimous contribution of all microbes and focuses on individual ones.
  7. Faoro, H., A. C. Alves, E. M. Souza, L. U. Rigo, L. M. Cruz, S. M. Al-Janabi, R. A. Monteiro, V. Baura, and F. O. Pedrosa. (2010). “Influence of Soil Characteristics on the Diversity of Bacteria in the Southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest.” Applied and Environmental Microbiology 76, no. 1, July, 4744-749. doi:10.1128/AEM.03025-09.Helisson Faoro, a Ph.D fellow and expert in fields such as Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, and Molecular Biology at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation’s Gene Expression Regulation Laboratory in Brazil, along with his fellow co-authors A.C. Alves, E.M. Souza, L.U. Rigo, L.M. Cruz, S. M. Al-Janabi, R.A. Monteiro, V.A. Baura, and F.O Pedrosa, are all credible experts in their fields. They analyzed bacterial diversity in the Southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest by collecting soil samples at different altitudes within the forest, such as coastal, submontane, montane, and high montane. After isolating the microorganisms from the soil sample, the scientists found that less diverse bacterial communities were associated with a lower soil pH and lower altitudes. The dominant phylum found included 25.2 % Proteobacteria and 63% Acidobacteria while more than 99% of the species are unidentifiable. Soils with clay have more diverse bacterial communities than those with silt or sand while human activity may account for the lower bacterial diversity at lower altitudes. This study allows us to understand the impact of human activity on the environment, specifically the microorganism communities, distinguish how soil characteristics and types directly impact the microorganism abundance at low, intermediate, and high altitudes, and how such microorganisms are able to survive at extreme altitudes. This may also help us determine the microorganisms’ impact on us, especially due to climate change.
  8. Siles, José A., and Rosa Margesin. (2016). “Abundance and Diversity of Bacterial, Archaeal, and Fungal Communities Along an Altitudinal Gradient in Alpine Forest Soils: What Are the Driving Factors?” Microbial Ecology 72, no. 1 July, 207-20. doi:10.1007/s00248-016-0748-2.José A. Siles is currently a Ph.D research associate at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley while Rosa Margesin, who received her Ph.D in Microbiology at University of Innsbruck is a professor in their area of expertise at the university. Taking climate change into account during spring and autumn, the experts designated four forest sites 545 to 2000 m above sea level in the Italian Alps, characterized by factors such as soil temperature, physicochemical properties like total nitrogen count, and microbial activities like respiration. Ultimately, they discovered that higher altitudes with lower soil temperatures yielded more organic soils with more nutrients, more abundance of microorganisms like fungi and bacteria, but less microbial activities. Archaeal communities did not significantly change abundance due to differing attitudes. This peer-reviewed journal would allow us to understand that although altitude is our independent variable, it may be impacted by other variables such as season, soil pH, soil physicochemical properties, and temperature so we should take those into account. However, the study points out that these factors are correlations, not causations. It also distinguishes the types, or communities of microorganisms, making it easier for us to characterize the data.  Scatter plots and charts represented the data, so this would help us in determining how we would represent our own BioBlitz data.