Expressions of Intent for International Polar Year 2007-2008 Activities

Expression of Interest Details

PROPOSAL INFORMATION

Arctic Soil Microbiology Network  (ASMN)

Outline
Arctic ecosystems are critical in global ecology. High latitude soils store a third of Earth’s soil carbon, are large sources of atmospheric methane, are very sensitive to climate change, and are already changing rapidly. The Arctic as a whole is now warmer than at anytime in the last 400 years. Additionally interesting, Arctic ecosystems are the most challenging on earth for terrestrial life, and are dominated by strong gradients in environment and ecosystem structure (low to high Arctic) and extreme variation within the course of a single year. While researchers have been studying plants and animals in the Arctic for many years, because of the interest in environmental variation, we still know remarkably little about Arctic soil microbial communities: What organisms are found in Arctic soils? Are there local endemic species and communities? How widely distributed are those species and communities? How do they vary across the strong latitudinal gradient of the Arctic? Do communities actually vary in their composition seasonally or does the growing-season-active community just get frozen in when winter comes along? While a number of groups around the world are contemplating research questions such as these, each study is focused on a single local area, usually a specific subset of the microbial community, and usually uses a suite of analytical techniques. Thus, while we are well poised to make a major leap in understanding microbial life in the Arctic, we are constrained by the lack of coordinated study. We propose to develop a network of research groups that will use molecular ecology techniques to characterize soil microbial communities across a suite of sites ranging from low to high Arctic and that taken as a coordinated effort will allow us to answer the questions framed above. We will sample soils during peak growing season and near snowmelt to assess the overwintering community. We will develop clone libraries to assess the community composition and quatitative PCR based approaches to quantitatively assess particular members of the bacterial community. However, given the variety of approaches to molecular community analysis that are currently available and the rate at which the technology changes, the most effective approaches will probably be different in 2006 than they are today. Thus, a key to this program will be to start with a coordinating meeting of Arctic microbiologists to develop the best protocol for sampling and molecular analysis.

What significant advance(s) in relation to the IPY themes and targets can be anticipated from this project?
The microbial flora of the Arctic is the least understood aspect of life in the Arctic. A short, coordinated, international effort can make a huge contribution toward greatly improving our understanding of Arctic microorganisms. This would constitute the first really coordinated regional study of microbial diversity in the world and so would provide the Arctic as a vantage for considering regional diversity elsewhere, and its use of cutting edge moluecular tools will allow us to explore new frontiers of knowledge.

What international collaboration is involved in this project?
This effort depends absolutely on international cooperation to organize samping and analysis. We already have groups expressing an interest in cooperating in the US, Finland, and Norway and would welcome others.

FIELD ACTIVITY DETAILS

Geographical location(s) for the proposed field activities:
Known field sites (where investigators have ongoing projects) would include Alaska, Greenland, Svalbard, northern Norway, and Finland. We would look for cooperators in Siberia as well.

Approximate timeframe(s) for proposed field activities:
Arctic: 05/2007 - 04/2008            
Antarctic: n/a

Significant facilities will be required for this project:
There are existing field stations in many of the appropriate areas already and so researchers will only need access to them, coupled to some field trips to remote sites to collect soil samples.

Will the project leave a legacy of infrastructure?
The key infrastructure that will remain is the data base of microorganisms identified. This will be a collection of accessions into the DNA databases along with the relevant metadata.

How is it envisaged that the required logistic support will be secured?
Consortium

Has the project been "endorsed" at a national or international level?
Not yet.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND STRUCTURE

Is the project a short-term expansion (over the IPY 2007-2008 timeframe) of an existing plan, programme or initiative or is it a new autonomous proposal?


As a large network activity this will be new. However, researchers are doing or are proposing to do work independently that would contribute to this activity.

How will the project be organised and managed?
We will form a coordinating group to organize the analysis effort. The first major job of that group will to organize a meeting to develop a suite of protocols to ensure coordinated efforts and methodologies (e.g. PCR probes).

What are the initial plans of the project for addressing the education, outreach and communication issues outlined in the Framework document?
There is great interest in novel microorganisms, and we hope to be active in spreading interesting discovery. Developing a specific outreach plan would be an important objective for the first working group meeting.

What are the initial plans of the project to address data management issues (as outlined in the Framework document?
The most important data elements that will be generated will be DNA sequences. GENBANK, for example, already exists to take in new sequences and to make them available and searchable to the global community. To publish the results of studies such as those we propose you must submit your sequences to GENBANK. q3_5_Funding : It is most likely that each group will have to be funded through national efforts, but we will ask several nations to fund the coordination activity.

How is it proposed to fund the project?
It is most likely that each group will have to be funded through national efforts, but we will ask several nations to fund the coordination activity.

Is there additional information you wish to provide?
None

PROPOSER DETAILS

Dr Joshua Schimel
Dept. Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology
University of California
Santa Barbara
93106
USA

Tel: 01-805-893-7688
Mobile: no
Fax: 01-805-893-4724
Email:

Other project members and their affiliation