XXXVIII CICLO | Cavallini Giorgia

PhD student with interest in microbial ecology. Seeking to investigate how climate change may affect the delicate balance that governs polar ecosystems.

Climate change is causing wide alterations in the natural balance and structure of numerous ecosystems, and alpine regions are among the most vulnerable ones. Soil microorganisms play crucial role in the regulation of biogeochemical cycles. There is a substantial gap in understanding the biological response to this change at the soil level, primarily due to the complex interactions between plants and microbial activity. The MICROPLANTALP project seeks to overcome these limits by integrating two complementary transplantation approaches within a single study. The goal is to characterize the responses of an alpine ecosystem under potential climate change scenarios. Soil monoliths, inclusive of native plants, collected at high altitude (2,500 m) in the Mont Blanc area, were used as model for this study. In the first approach, monoliths were transplanted to a lower altitude (1,500 m), while in the second approach, monoliths were subjected to two distinct future climate change scenarios projected by the IPCC for the year 2070, at the European Ecotron in France. Changes in the diversity, composition and metabolic activity of soil microbial communities will be evaluated for samples from both experiments. The data obtained will be compared and integrated, considering above-ground plant growth, carbon fluxes, and soil physicochemical parameters.