Landscape Topography and Regional Drought Alters Dust Microbiomes in the Sierra Nevada of California.

ABSTRACT: Dust provides an ecologically significant input of nutrients, especially in slowly eroding ecosystems where chemical weathering intensity limits nutrient inputs from underlying bedrock. In addition to nutrient inputs, incoming dust is a vector for dispersing dust-associated microorganisms. While little is known about dust-microbial dispersal, dust deposits may have transformative effects on ecosystems far from where the dust was emitted. Using molecular analyses, we examined spatiotemporal variation in incoming dust microbiomes along an elevational gradient within the Sierra Nevada of California. We sampled throughout two dry seasons and found that dust microbiomes differed by elevation across two summer dry seasons (2014 and 2015), which corresponded to competing droughts in dust source a

SUBMITTER: Maltz MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9274194 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature