The Effect of Climate Change on Soil Organic Carbon over an Elevational Gradient

Abstract

Climate change will increasingly impact ecosystem functioning due to shifts in species distributions as they seek their optimal climatic conditions. Plants rely on phenotypic plasticity of leaf traits to tolerate a change in their climate. Plant leaf traits also affect the carbon cycle of the local area, which may impact the carbon sequestration of the soils. For this project, I measured soil organic carbon over time using space-for-time substitution to study plant communities along an elevational gradient. I collected soil moisture, carbon, and efflux and, in addition, conducted a community survey of the plant species. Both soil carbon and soil moisture significantly increase across an elevational gradient. Additionally, soil carbon is best explained through a combination of soil moisture and biomaterial weight. As soil organic carbon is vulnerable to environmental changes, monitoring soil organic carbon is necessary to determine if there is a loss of carbon sequestration in the area, which can accelerate climate change.

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