SEFS Assistant Professor, Claire Willing, joined SEFS faculty in the fall of 2023 as part of a cohort of faculty working in the area of climate adaptation. Willing’s most recent research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, developed a risk-assessment framework for studying forest microbiomes in a changing climate.

The microbiome plays a pivotal role in both the structure and function of our forests. Willing and co-authors assessed the vulnerability of our forests through the lens of both microbial and forest ecology, aiming to unite these often disparate fields of research to create a better understanding of forest response to climate change. 

Forests are teeming with life. From soils deep below the forest floor to the highest leaves of the canopy, microbial communities are essential parts of forest systems . Recent decades of research have revealed how these forest microbiomes can play very important roles in plant establishment, carbon sequestration, and plant response to disturbances such as drought and fire.  The impacts of shifts in microbiome diversity, abundance, and membership on forest systems as a result of climate change, however, is an area of ongoing research. 

One of the important challenges that Willing and colleagues identified through this research was that records of how microbes respond to climate are very limited in Western science. However, many Indigenous communities like the Karuk Tribe in Northern California, have been documenting fungal fruiting patterns, and passing that knowledge down, for thousands of years. So as part of this work, Willing and her team collaborated with Karuk Cultural Practitioners to highlight a case study of the importance of Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty in forest research. This case study articulated how Karuk Cultural Practitioners have noted a dramatic decline in matsutake fungi as a result of warmer fall temperatures combined with later onset of winter rainfall, conditions that will be occurring more often in the face of climate change. 

This risk assessments framework will help researchers to better predict and manage the vulnerability of our forest microbiomes. Understanding microbial responses to climate change is challenging and this study aims to reduce some of the barriers researchers face when trying to understand, and predict the behavior of, these complex below ground communities. 

You can read the full article here. 

Assistant Professor Claire Willing runs the Forest Mycobiome Lab at the University of Washington. You can find out more about her lab and their ongoing research on her lab website.