Kathleen Treseder
University of California-Irvine, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Soils hold more carbon than the atmosphere and all plants on Earth combined. As soil microbes break down that carbon, they release CO2 to the air, about ten times more each year than fossil fuel burning.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
soil microbes
soil carbon
carbon cycle
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Test whether soil fungi and bacteria adapt to extreme warming more effectively when they interact with the natural microbial community, through field evolution experiments spanning thousands of generations.
- Determine whether extreme warming selects for multi-species biofilm formation, with extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) protecting microbes from heat damage.
- Measure whether adaptation within biofilms speeds soil organic carbon decomposition, using lab experiments and computer ecosystem modeling that mirror the field design.
- Assess EPS production in soils from NEON sites spanning diverse terrestrial habitats to test how general the findings are.
More about the research
Microbes reproduce quickly, so they could evolve as the climate warms, but no one knows whether they will release more or less CO2 as a result. In nature, fungi and bacteria often live together in multi-species biofilms. These slimy communities are held together by extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), a protective matrix the cells secrete.
Why it matters
Uncertainty about how soil microbes respond to warming limits predictions of how quickly climate change will progress. Learning whether microbes evolving in biofilms keep or increase soil carbon breakdown under extreme heat could improve climate models and projections of greenhouse gas release from soils. Better projections could help societies prepare for regional climate hazards.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Steven Hall
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether variation in soil organic matter properties and cycling across U.S. ecosystems can be explained by three fundamental axes running from fast to slow biogeochemical rates, using samples and data from NEON sites.
Natasja Van Gestel
Texas Tech University, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how experimental warming with open-top chambers changes net ecosystem carbon exchange along an Antarctic gradient from bare glacier soil to full plant cover, using field gas-exchange measurements.
Serita Frey
University of New Hampshire, NH·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether decades of soil warming produce cycles of organic matter decay punctuated by shifts in the soil microbial community, continuing core measurements across Harvard Forest plots warmed 5 degrees Celsius for 13, 16 and 28 years.
The school
University of California-Irvine: 46 labs on PI Pages, $645M a year on research, 524 research doctorates a year.
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