How soil microorganisms get out of step through climate change
Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - 09:00
in Earth & Climate
Scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München, in collaboration with colleagues from the TU München and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), have studied how soil microorganisms react to climatic change. Their result: Extreme weather events such as long periods of drought and heavy rainfall have a strong impact on the metabolic activity of microbes. This may lead to a change in the nutrient balance in soils and, in extreme cases, may even increase greenhouse gas emissions like nitrous oxide to the atmosphere concentrations.