ArticleFrontiers in microbiology2019
Assessment of Artificial and Natural Transport Mechanisms of Ice Nucleating Particles in an Alpine Ski Resort in Obergurgl, Austria.
Article in Frontiers in microbiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Environmental Contaminants in Surface Snow Samples Made from Reclaimed Water at a Ski Resort: A Mass Spectrometry Analysis.ACS environmental Au · 2026Article
- Disentangling bacterial diversity and biogeography in snow-covered regions.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Article
- Microbial Selection and Functional Adaptation in Technical Snow: A Molecular Perspective from 16S rRNA Profiling.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Ski Tourism Shapes the Snow Microbiome on Ski Slopes in the Italian Central Alps.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Article
- The effect of temperature and nitrogen source modulation on Pseudomonas fluorescens AQP671 ice recrystallization inhibition activity.PloS one · 2025Article
- Whole-Cell Biosensor for Iron Monitoring as a Potential Tool for Safeguarding Biodiversity in Polar Marine Environments.Marine drugs · 2024Review
- Applied microbiology of the phyllosphere.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Artificial snow production is a crucial part of modern skiing resorts in Austria and globally, and will develop even more so with changing precipitation patterns and a warming climate trend. Producing artificial snow requires major investments in energy, water, infrastructure and manpower for skiing resorts. In addition to appropriate meteorological conditions, the efficiency of artificial snow production depends on heterogeneous ice-nucleation, which can occur at temperatures as high as -2°C when induced by specific bacterial ice nucleating particles (INPs). We aimed to investigate the presence, source and ice nucleating properties of these particles in the water cycle of an alpine ski resort in Obergurgl, Tyrol, Austria. We sampled artificial snow, river water, water pumped from a storage pond and compared it to samples collected from fresh natural snow and aged piste snow from the area. Particles from each sampled system were characterized in order to determine their transport mechanisms at a ski resort. We applied a physical droplet freezing assay [DRoplet Ice Nuclei Counter Zurich (DRINCZ)] to heated and unheated samples to characterize the biological and non-biological component of IN-activity. Bacterial abundance and community structure of the samples was obtained using quantitative PCR and Illumina Mi-Seq Amplicon Sequencing, and their chemical properties were determined by liquid ion-chromatography, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results show the flow of biological and inorganic material from the river to the slopes, an uptake of new microorganisms through the air and the piping, and possible proliferation or introduction of ice nucleation active biological particles in aged piste snow. Natural snow, as the first stage in this system, had the lowest amount of ice nucleation active particles and the least amount of biological and mineral particles in general, yet shares some microbial characteristics with fresh artificial snow.
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