Soil microbes and climate change: understanding nutrient cycling in soggy soil
Supervisors:
Jason Chin, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast
Paul N. Williams, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast
John W. McGrath, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast
Timothy S George, Ecological Sciences Department, The James Hutton Institute
Summary:
Global warming is going to drive widespread changes to our world, such as long-term alterations in surface temperature, rainfall, and land types. In the UK, an increased amount of rain at some times of the year is expected to cause much more waterlogging of agricultural soils, while higher temperatures and less rain at other times of the year will cause drying and compaction. What impact this will have on agricultural output isn’t clear, but it is likely to have a significant impact on the soil microbes which keep soil healthy by mobilising nutrients for plant consumption.
This project seeks to explore what these changes will be like, how microbial activity in soils may relate to them, and what impact this may have on our ability to grow food in the UK. We will use soil microcosms with nutrient additions to chemically analyse the type and mobility of nutrients in treated soils, as well as cutting edge culturomic and molecular techniques to explore how the soil microbial community is altered and what this means for nutrient availability for plants. We hope this will give us a better understanding of what will happen in our soils as the world changes.