Background Little is known about the combined impacts of global environmental changes and ecological disturbances on ecosystem functioning, even though such combined impacts might play critical roles in shaping ecosystem processes that can in turn feed back to climate change, such as soil emissions of greenhouse gases. Methodology/Principal Findings We […]
Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) can affect biotic and abiotic conditions in soil, such as microbial activity and water content1, 2. In turn, these changes might be expected to alter the production and consumption of the important greenhouse gases nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) (refs 2, 3). […]
Increased atmospheric CO2 and rising temperatures are expected to affect rice yields and greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from rice paddies1, 2, 3, 4. This is important, because rice cultivation is one of the largest human-induced sources of the potent GHG methane5 (CH4) and rice is the world’s second-most produced staple crop6. […]
Soils are important sources and sinks of three greenhouse gases (GHGs): carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). However, it is unknown whether semiarid landscapes are important contributors to global fluxes of these gases, partly because our mechanistic understanding of soil GHG fluxes is largely derived from more […]
Concerns about rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations have spurred the promotion of no-tillage practices as a means to stimulate carbon storage and reduce CO2 emissions in agro-ecosystems. Recent research has ignited debate about the effect of earthworms on the GHG balance of soil. It is unclear how earthworms interact with […]
To gain a more mechanistic understanding of how soil organic matter (OM) characteristics can affect carbon mineralization in tidal freshwater wetlands, we conducted a long-term in situ field manipulation of OM type and monitored associated changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) production. In addition, we characterized microbial community […]
Interviewed by STICH Scholar and Ecoss social media specialist Kayla Blair. Meet Vic Monsaint-Queeney, a PhD candidate in Bruce Hungate’s lab! Here, Vic studies bacteria in the soil on the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, where she looks at the different types of nitrogen that these microbes consume. The research involves […]
Interviewed by STICH Scholar and Ecoss social media specialist Kayla Blair. Meet Jasmine Anenberg, a PhD student in the Bowker lab! This lab’s main job is to learn about and restore soil function to areas that have been degraded, by preventing erosion, stimulating nutrient cycling and productivity, or manipulating water […]
By the end of this century, permafrost in the rapidly warming Arctic will likely emit as much carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere as a large industrial nation, and potentially more than the U.S. has emitted since the start of the industrial revolution. But that’s only one possible future […]
The tiny cosmos of organisms living on a streamer of algae in a river—the algal microbiome—could help scientists learn what turns an environment from healthy to toxic and back again. A multidisciplinary team led by Northern Arizona University has won $3 million from the National Science Foundation to translate the […]