Editorial: Polar and Alpine Microbiology.
Earth’s polar and alpine regions comprise a range of distinct habitats and ecosystems which share important common traits. Their biogeochemical and ecological processes are mostly driven by microorganisms, and they are extremely vulnerable to the ongoing climate change. Polar and Alpine Microbiology is, therefore, an important and timely discipline, evolved from initial descriptive studies of various habitats and environments into a fully-fledged hypothesis-driven research field that uses stateof-the-art fieldand laboratory-based approaches including different omics techniques, incubation experiments, geochemical analysis, and mathematical modelling. The underlying research objective of Polar and Alpine Microbiology is to answer the questions of how microorganisms respond to the current rapid climate warming and how their responses impact on the functioning of the Earth system?