A recent study from KBS students suggests that climate warming can offset insect damage in tall goldenrod, potentially making this already aggressive prairie plant even more dominant as temperatures rise. Climate change may reduce yields of crops like corn and soybeans, but it can also give some plants an edge. That’s one of the takeaways of a recent study of tall goldenrod, a common wildflower that runs rampant in fields across its native range in North America and other parts of the world where it has been introduced. Many goldenrod plants are pocked by tumorlike growths, called
Graduate research from the KBS LTER highlights the role of drought in altering plant-environment interactions
Through an experiment that simulates future climate change conditions within the KBS LTER, researchers found that drought strongly affects the chemical compounds released by goldenrod, suggesting that climate change could significantly influence how ecosystems function. Though you might not be able to see it with the naked eye, plants are constantly interacting with their environment. One way they do this is through the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – chemical signals that help them communicate and react to both living and non-living factors around them. These VOCs form the
Graduate research from the KBS LTER reveals how nematodes contribute to soil food web stability in droughts
Using the Rainfall Exclusion Experiment (REX) within the KBS LTER, researchers found that nematode communities are more stable in early successional landscapes than agricultural ones during drought. This study highlights the importance of plant diversity for resilient soil ecosystems under environmental change. As farmers adopt new strategies to cope with increasingly extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and droughts, understanding the mechanisms behind resiliency in agricultural systems is critical. While it’s well-established that drought harms crop production, less is known about h
Graduate research from the KBS LTER explores grassland resilience to climate change
Two decades of data on plant communities and weather from the LTER Main Cropping Systems Experiment show that extreme dry and wet years reduce species richness (the number of species) but increase evenness (how evenly abundant the species are). Because richness and evenness also increase long-term stability and resistance to extreme precipitation events, these changes to communities might have long-lasting effects on the resilience of plant communities to the increasingly variable precipitation patterns expected in the future. While the focus of climate change is often on warming
Drought effect on pore structure in soils: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Goutham Thotakuri is a graduate student in the Kravchenko lab at Michigan State University. His research is focused on the study of carbon transfer between various cover crop species and soil carbon sequestration. Recent changes to our climate dynamics have brought on alarming drought conditions in many parts of the world. Since we cannot control the climate, we need to prepare our agricultural systems for adversity. One way to do this is through understanding the soil's hydro-physical and biochemical processes. We can identify critical factors influencing drought resilience by
Trials and tribulations of a PhD student: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Moriah Young is a graduate student at the Kellogg Biological Station and a member of Phoebe Zarnetske's Lab. Her PhD research seeks to understand the effects of climate change on soil biota, plant, and herbivore interactions. Using a combination of field and greenhouse studies, Moriah works to understand the ways in which the composition and structure of soil microbial communities respond to warming and drought, as well as describing the role that the soil microbial community has on plant traits, stress responses, and insect preferences in the presence of warming and drought. I went into
Disentangling the complex effects of climate change on above and belowground communities: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Graduate researcher, Moriah Young, is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Phoebe Zarnetske’s lab at Michigan State University. The lab uses open top chambers (OTCs) to study how biotic interactions and climate change directly and indirectly affect community structure and function at the KBS LTER. Climate change is a pressing threat to ecosystems around the world. From warmer temperatures to more unpredictable rainfall, climate change has shown to have a myriad of effects on ecosystems. Most research has focused on direct effects of climate change on species. For example, how does warming a
Studying climate change effects on plant traits: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Graduate researcher, Kara Dobson, is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Phoebe Zarnetske’s Spatial and Community Ecology (SpaCE) Lab at Michigan State University. Her research focus is on the effects of climate warming and rainfall variability on plant traits. Climate change poses a looming threat to the functioning of ecosystems worldwide. Within ecosystems, my interest lies with plants and how they respond to stress caused by climate change. The way plants respond to stress varies widely and is dependent on things such as trait differences between plant species, differences in geographic location