Winter forest soil respiration controlled by climate and microbial community composition.

A warmer climate has been linked to reduced snow pack in alpine and subalpine ecosystems in the western United States and Europe over the past several decades. But there could be a silver lining to this phenomenon, in the shape of a feedback linking climate to forest carbon cycling. Monson et al. report that shallower snow packs can reduce carbon dioxide loss from the soil in mountain forest ecosystems. This can be explained by the reduced respiration of a particular soil microbial community that lives beneath the snow and is particularly sensitive to the soil cooling that results from a thinning of the insulating blanket of snow.