Project Grant 2325922

This Project Grant award was issued by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Polar Programs under CFDA 47.078, which supports basic research in the polar regions. The $433,800 grant, awarded on October 1, 2023 for a 3-year period, will fund a collaborative research project between experts to characterize the microbial diversity in the Paramos soils of Colombia and investigate how climate change impacts microbe functions. The research aims to understand how climate-driven changes to the Paramos ecosystem, a critical water source and carbon sink, could affect the ability of these soils to store organic carbon and regulate water flow. The project will establish controlled soil mesocosms to independently vary moisture and temperature, use metagenomics and amplicon sequencing to study soil microbiome functions, and deploy probes for long-term in-situ monitoring. Additionally, the project will engage high school and undergraduate students to develop and deploy low-cost soil monitoring data loggers. The research findings will be presented at an international Paramos symposium to discuss linkages between above and below-ground ecosystem functions and guide future climate change systems research.