Xiaojing Yang

Alleviating global warming is an urgent issue and my research interest is always concerned with this topic. Here for my PhD research, I focus on studying carbon sequestration to reduce CO2 emissions. Perennial agriculture, with large belowground biomass, demonstrates more advantages in carbon storage than conventional annual ones. The microorganism not only plays a key role in the decomposition but has also been defined a new role as a “Microbial Carbon Pump”, promoting carbon sequestration by microbial assimilation. Thus, my study is trying to elucidate the microbial role in deep soil carbon sequestration in perennial ecosystems, supervised by Johannes Rousk, Lettice Hicks and Albert Brangarí.

To achieve this research goal, we will carry out the stable isotopic tracing method, soil organic matter fractionation method and monitoring the microbial activity to try to investigate the potential of perennial farming in increasing deep soil carbon storage and enhance our mechanistic understanding of the microbial role in carbon turnover. In general, this research will be field sampling and lab work combined.