Gilda Varliero: soil microbes

Microbiologist Gilda Varliero, of the University of Pretoria, describes her research on microbial communities in permafrost around Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

• Transcript

  My name is Gilda Varliero. I work for the University of Pretoria. I'm an Arctic microbiologist and I'm here at the Canadian High Arctic Research station.

  So now I'm working on permafrost soil samples. We are looking at microbial communities in permafrost soil, and how they change during the thaw season.

  Permafrost is soil that has been frozen for more than two consecutive years. During permafrost formation, plant and animal remains get trapped into the soil matrix. This means that permafrost is very rich in organic carbon.

  Once permafrost thaws, this organic carbon becomes available to the microbial communities. So these microbial communities metabolize the organic carbon. This means that the release of these gases can impact further the greenhouse effect and impact the global warming. This creates a positive feedback to permafrost thaw. That's why microbial communities play a very important role in permafrost, and that's why we need to study them.

  As a visiting researcher working here at the research station has been very nice because I have all the equipment I need to do DNA extraction and to process the DNA and also the sampling site is just around the corner, around the corner, so I can just go there and take a fresh permafrost soil sample.