Microbes

How warming is shifting microbial worlds

Climate change is affecting microbes, and that has implications for all life on Earth

An aerial view of a forrest of mostly-barren trees, with a few fuller, green trees along the horizon.

At the Prospect Hill field site in Harvard Forest, an experiment that imitates the effects of climate change on soil has been running for 35 years.

Courtesy of Audrey Barker Plotkin

By Erin Garcia de Jesús

At first glance, Harvard Forest seems like an ordinary woodland. Oak trees shade the terrain among small shrubs and other trees, mostly maple, birch and beech.