The last 50 years of climate-induced melting of the Maliy Aktru glacier (Altai Mountains, Russia) revealed in a primary ecological succession

Ecology and Evolution
Roberto Cazzolla GattiIgor V Volkov

Abstract

In this article, we report and discuss the results obtained from a survey of plants, microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), and soil elements along a chronosequence in the first 600 m of the Maliy Aktru glacier's forefront (Altai Mountains, Russia). Many glaciers of the world show effects of climate change. Nonetheless, except for some local reports, the ecological effects of deglaciation have been poorly studied and have not been quantitatively assessed in the Altai Mountains. Here, we studied the ecological changes of plants, fungi, bacteria, and soil elements that take the form of a primary ecological succession and that took place over the deglaciated soil of the Maliy Aktru glacier during the last 50 year. According to our measurements, the glacier lost about 12 m per year during the last 50 years. Plant succession shows clear signs of changes along the incremental distance from the glacier forefront. The analysis of the plant α- and β-diversity confirmed an expected increase of them with increasing distance from the glacier forefront. Moreover, the analysis of β-diversity confirmed the hypothesis of the presence of three main stages of the plant succession: (a) initial (pioneer species) from 30 to 100 m; (b) intermediate (r...Continue Reading

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
atomic absorption spectroscopy
PCR
PCRs
amplicon sequencing

Software Mentioned

R packages
OptiClust
R
Blast
UCHIME
packfor
mothur
FUNGuilds
EstimateS

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