Microbial temperature dependence in soil: the feed-back to climate warming

The main focus of my PhD projects is to understand the microbial temperature dependences in soil, if and how they will feedback to climate change.I study how soil warming affect the temperature relationships for microbial growth and respiration in different biomes across seasons.The link between microbial temperature relationships and the climate is assessed by using the relationship between the environmental temperature and indices including the minimum (Tmin), optimum (Topt) and maximum (Tmax) temperature for microbial growth andfor respiration. To estimate the Tmin, Topt and Tmax ,we use models including the square root equation, the Ratkowsky. Furthermore, I would like to understand what is theinfluenceof warming onthe microbial community structure, therefore, linking microbial temperature relationships to differences in the community. By incorporating the determined relationships between environmental temperature and microbial growth and respiration into large scale ecosystem models, we can get a better understanding of the influence of microbial adaptation to warmer climate on the C-exchange between soils and atmosphere.

This project is financed by the Strategic Research Area BECC.