category: Research

Microbial communities and biogeochemical functioning across peatlands in the Athabasca Oil Sands region of Canada: Implications for reclamation and management

Peatlands play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles and are essential for multiple ecosystem functions. Understanding the environmental drivers of microbial functioning and community structure can provide insights to enable effective and evidence-based management. However, it remains largely unknown how microbial diversity contributes to the functioning of belowground processes. …

Aspects of microbial communities in peatland carbon cycling under changing climate and land use pressures.

This is a perspective review authored by peatland scientists, microbial ecologists, land managers and non-governmental organisations who were attendees at a series of three workshops held at The University of Manchester in 2019-2020. Here we review the impacts of climate change (search criteria for references are given in the introduction …

Soil biocrusts affect metabolic response to hydration on dunes in west Queensland, Australia

Soil biocrusts, formed from communities of microbes and their extracellular products are a common feature of dryland soil surfaces. Biocrust organisms are only intermittently metabolically active, but due to their ubiquity they make a significant contribution to the carbon cycle. Quantification of the controls and insights into the interlinked process of photosynthesis and respiration are …

Methane production and oxidation potentials along a fen‐bog gradient from southern boreal to subarctic peatlands in Finland

Methane (CH4) emissions from northern peatlands are projected to increase due to climate change, primarily because of projected increases in soil temperature. Yet, the rates and temperature responses of the two CH4 emission-related microbial processes (CH4 production by methanogens and oxidation by methanotrophs) are poorly known. Further, peatland sites within a fen-bog …

Active microbial ecosystem in glacier basal ice fuelled by iron and silicate comminution-derived hydrogen

The basal zone of glaciers is characterized by physicochemical properties that are distinct from firnified ice due to strong interactions with underlying substrate and bedrock. Basal ice (BI) ecology and the roles that the microbiota play in biogeochemical cycling, weathering, and proglacial soil formation remain poorly described. We report on …

Putting biodiversity on the map

Biodiversity is the foundation of functioning ecosystems and provides resources that humans need to survive and prosper. Whilst this simple fact is obvious, collective actions of people are driving biodiversity loss at an alarming rate. Fortunately, there is a growing recognition of this problem and a new enthusiasm for protecting …

Towards a microbial process-based understanding of the resilience of peatland ecosystem service provisioning – A research agenda

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems with great significance as natural habitats and as major global carbon stores. They have been subject to widespread exploitation and degradation with resulting losses in characteristic biota and ecosystem functions such as climate regulation. More recently, large-scale programmes have been established to restore peatland ecosystems and …

Effects of vegetation on bacterial communities, carbon and nitrogen in dryland soil surfaces: implications for shrub encroachment in the southwest Kalahari

Shrub encroachment is occurring in many of the world’s drylands, but its impacts on ecosystem structure and function are still poorly understood. In particular, it remains unclear how shrub encroachment affects dryland soil surfaces, including biological soil crust (biocrust) communities. In this study, soil surfaces (0–1 cm depth) were sampled from …

The effect of soil incubation on bio self-healing of cementitious mortar

Successful implementation of bacteria-based self-healing in cracked cementitious materials requires the provision of a suitable incubation environment, which can activate the bacteria to produce e.g. calcium carbonate sealing the cracks. Research to date has focused on the self-healing process in humid air and water. However, almost all structures are built …

Compositional homogeneity in the pathobiome of a new, slow-spreading coral disease

Coral reefs face unprecedented declines in diversity and cover, a development largely attributed to climate change-induced bleaching and subsequent disease outbreaks. Coral-associated microbiomes may strongly influence the fitness of their hosts and alter heat tolerance and disease susceptibility of coral colonies. Here, we describe a new coral disease found in …