Effects of dust-caused early snowmelt on soil moisture, soil carbon and nitrogen, and plant growth and reproductive output in a snow manipulation experiment

Regional climate forecasts for the western United States predict slightly more snow accumulation during the winter but warmer springs and earlier spring snowmelt. Snowmelt will be further advanced by radiative forcing from dust and black carbon deposition on mountain snowpack. We expect earlier snowmelt to reduce regional water supplies (Painter et al., 2010) and suspect that it may also lead to drier soil conditions which could impact nutrient cycling and plant growth and reproduction in alpine and subalpine environments. Our snow manipulation experiment included 12 sites at two elevations in paired forest and meadow sites. We added dust to the snow surface during spring ablation. The dust treatment reduced snowpack by 20 to 40% and advanced the snowfree date by 9 to 14 days. Following snowmelt, there was a temporary difference in soil moisture in the upper 0-15 cm of soil between the treatment and control plots. Following snowmelt, the temporary differences in soil moisture quickly converged during soil drydown to a lower limit determined by the soil characteristics specific to each site. This brief window of differences in soil moisture may have temporary impacts on ecosystem processes; however, the impacts are mediated by plant and microbial phenology. Some of the plants and microbes in seasonally-snow-covered environments are adapted to take advantage of the early season environments which include low temperatures and frequent freezing, while other plants and microbes have evolved to avoid this transition period through prolonged dormancy. These adaptations, and the transient nature of environmental differences caused by early snowmelt, may limit the impacts of early snowmelt on carbon and nitrogen cycling and on plant growth and reproduction in subalpine forest and meadows.