RANDOLPH CENTER, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont State University researchers and students are back home after spending part of the summer in Greenland and Alaska to study the effects of climate change on Arctic microbial environments.
VTSU undergrads Caleb Tilton and Dominic Mazzilli suit up to check out frozen collections of permafrost they brought back from Greenland. Their goal is to study the microbes within the samples.
“Fantastic. I was not expecting to have an opportunity like this, so it’s been a great experience overall,” Tilton said.
“It has been pretty incredible,” Mazzilli added.
Microbes play a large role in interactions in the biosphere and chemical reactions in the Arctic. As the Arctic continues to warm, more and more permafrost is melting, exposing those microbes. The researchers hope the samples will help them better understand microenvironments from the past.
Mazzilli, a junior at the Randloph campus, says he’s always been concerned about the climate, so this project is of particular interest.
“Having that thawing out is really changing the soil communities that the world is seeing, and understanding how those are being impacted by the warming climate is what this project is really trying to figure out,” he said.
“We’re going to use recent advancements in CT imaging, specifically XRM technology. So, we’re going to image microbes where they lay, which has potentially never been done before in permafrost,” Tilton said.
VTSU Professor Michelle Sama took part in the trip and says collaborations with institutions like the University of Vermont are a huge help, made possible by the Vermont Biomedical Research Network.
“It allows smaller institutions like we are to not only collaborate with other colleges and universities within the state, but to tap into a whole bunch of resources allowing us to kind of push our work forward and allow us to have access to things that we might not normally have access to,” she said.
Sama says the students have grown and matured through this work and she hopes more students have the same opportunity.
“It was just amazing to just see this enriched learning experience that students were able to gain through this project,” she said.
The students will continue their research on the Randolph Center campus and another team is expected to head to the Canadian Arctic next summer to sample more microbes.
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