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

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.