Microbial Regulation of Soil Functions in Agro-Ecosystems (SoilReg)

Soil functions control ecosystem services and perils such as the emission of greenhouse gases and accumulation or leaching of pesticides. The microbial regulation of important storage, filter and buffer functions of soils is not fully understood. In the experimental part of this project we will combine stable isotope with molecular methods (metagenomics, proteomics) and develop them further to gain information about the structure of microbial communities in soil and their functions. These data will be used to simulate biological, chemical and physical processes on various scales. Complex bottom-up models, which will explicitly account for the dynamics of enzymes, microbial communities and related transformation processes, will be parameterized with molecular biological and physicochemical data. With these simulations, we want to elucidate which small-scale regulation mechanisms may be effective on plot and field scale and how much complexity is necessary to simulate soil functions. Model-based predictions will be complemented and experimentally tested on plot and field scale.