Introduction

The problem that we investigated was how moisture affects fungi in the decomposition process and sulfur levels in the soil.

Courtesy of: http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/Biology/eco/soil/soils1.htm

In the 2013 ESSRE biota survey, we found that there were anomalous levels of sulfur between the four different microclimates that were significantly different. We then decided to ask the question, why are sulfur levels so greatly varied between microclimates? As we looked at why this could be occurring, we decided that a possible explanation could be the different amounts of moisture, as moisture affects the rate of decomposition. If more moisture is in fact increasing the rate of decomposition, then there should be more fungi present, and also higher sulfur levels because of the fungi performing the process of decomposition at a faster rate. We decided to manipulate moisture levels to see what is causing the significantly different sulfur levels because there are different amounts of moisture in the four different microclimates, as some are located by a swamp or a river, while another one is on a hill that does not get a lot of water because of the steep slope that makes the water move quickly past that microclimate.  We asked our question because sulfur is an important nutrient for the soil. Low sulfur levels in microclimates could be problematic, as plants require sulfur and it makes up parts of some amino acids.