Wednesday, November 7, 2007 - 10:35 AM
290-3
Microbial Responses to a Changing Climate: Implications for the Future Functioning of Terrestrial Ecosystems.
Donald R. Zak, University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources & Environment, 440 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Soil harbors a phylogenetically diverse community of microorganisms whose physiological activity mediates the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen at local, regional and global scales. These heterotrophic microbial communities are structured by the physical environment as well as the availability of growth-limiting resources (i.e., organic compounds in plant detritus). Presently, human activity is manipulating both the physical conditions and the availability of resources to soil microbial communities at a global scale, but the implications of doing so for the future functioning of ecosystems is presently unclear. In this presentation, I will discuss the ways in which humans are manipulating the ecological constraints on microbial communities in soil, the compositional and functional responses that may result, and identify gaps in our knowledge that limit our ability to anticipate the response of microbial communities and the ecosystem processes they mediate. I will specifically focus on microbial processes in soil that govern biogeochemical processes across a range of spatial scales.