The Effect of Ecological Restoration on the Structure and Function of Soil Microbial Communities in Cranberry Bogs

Ecological restoration seeks to improve degraded ecosystem functions such as carbon storage, removal of nutrient pollution, and regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. These functions are primarily governed by microbes living in the soil, yet these microbial communities are not explicitly considered or monitored as a part of most restoration efforts. This group of research projects seeks to understand the impact of ecological restoration of cranberry bogs on the structure and function soil microbial communities in restored cranberry bogs. Using genetic and genomic techniques, we can survey the thousands of microbial species residing in the soil; we can monitor how they change over time; and we can associate those changes with functions of interest to understand which restoration methodologies produce the best outcomes.

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Filling critical data gaps: Monitoring the development of soil microbial communities in restored cranberry bogs

By Jason Andras on July 26, 2024
In the summer of 2022, the Ballantine and Andras research groups from Mount Holyoke College collected 255 soil samples from 26 localities across Eastern Massachusetts as part of a large and ongoing cranberry restoration monitoring project funded by the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, Division of Ecological Restoration (DER). To facilitate a comparative analysis of wetland soil development, our sampling localities were chosen to encompass four different site types: sites that were in active cranberry agriculture, sites that were retired from cranberry agriculture, former cranberry farms that have undergone ecological restoration, and natural reference peat bogs. These localities were geo-referenced and coordinated across all working groups involved in this study in order to facilitate comparative analysis across many types of data including attributes of soil biogeochemistry, as well as communities of plants, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and fish.

Contributors

Jason Andras
Principal Investigator
Kate Ballantine
Co-Principal Investigator
Rachel Rubin
Researcher
Jeff Blanchard
Researcher
William Rodriguez-Reillo
Researcher
Alexander Truchon
Researcher
Erin Pierce
Researcher
Arden Hegberg
Researcher

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