Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

My research broadly focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem function using soil systems as models. Soils are a non-renewable resource that contain the majority of the world's biodiversity and perform important functions such as nutrient cycling and carbon storage. Soil carbon storage is of paramount importance for ecosystem health and global climate regulation. Over 90% of aboveground terrestrial carbon (plants and animals) enters the soil system as dead organic matter. This organic matter is used by members of the soil food web (invertebrates and microorganisms) as a basal resource, and is ultimately stored in the soil as organic matter, is dissolved and exported to surface waters as dissolved organic carbon, or is re-emitted back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Soil biodiversity and the structure of soil food webs regulate and govern the fate of carbon in soils, and determine whether carbon will be stored (sequestered) or released back to the atmosphere. Changes in soil biodiversity will alter ecosystem-level carbon processes, yet it is largely unknown how climate change will affect soil food web structure and biodiversity, and hence soil carbon storage potential. I use a combined approach of large-scale field observations, laboratory, greenhouse and field-scale experimental manipulations, and theoretical approaches to understand how global environmental changes will impact soil biodiversity and function. The objectives of my research are to mechanistically link soil food web structure to carbon storage and flux, as well as to understand the determinants of soil biodiversity under global change. In the next five years, I will: 1) link warming-induced changes in plant composition to alterations in the soil food web structure and function, 2) quantify carbon flux using parameterized peatland soil food web models, and in doing so 3) calculate energy budgets, track carbon pathways, and predict carbon storage potential under global change. There is an urgent need to understand and incorporate soil processes, including food web interactions, into carbon storage models and I have the capacity to make dramatic advances in the scientific understand of soil food webs that will allow predictions of carbon storage in peatland systems.