Peter Nico | Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Parched: quantifying microbial ecophysiology and the fate of plant carbon during soil dry down

Lead Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Steve Blazewicz

Project type

FICUS Research

In seasonally dry grasslands, soil microbes bloom during the plant growing season, survive extreme desiccation (water potential < -35 MPa) during long dry periods, and then rapidly mineralize soil…

X-ray tomography to incorporate redox conditions into soil carbon turnover models

Lead Institution

Oregon State University

Principal Investigator

Markus Kleber

Project type

Exploratory Research

We suggest that X-ray tomography can be successfully employed to generate numerical values of a) total pore space, b) pore geometry, c) pore size distribution and d) pore connectivity at relevant…

The Role of Anaerobic Microsites in Soil Carbon Storage

Lead Institution

Stanford University

Principal Investigator

Scott Fendorf

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The overarching goal of this project is to quantitatively place the importance of metabolic constraints in anaerobic microsites on the rate of soil organic matter (OM) oxidation, and thus advance our…

Tracing the Influence of Exudate Chemistry, Microbiology, and Mineralogy on the Decomposition and Stabilization of Root-Derived Carbon

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Mary Firestone

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Soils store more carbon (C) than the atmosphere and biosphere combined, yet the fundamental mechanisms that regulate this vast pool of C remain elusive. Plant roots are the dominant source of C in…

The persistence of soil organic carbon in the mineralosphere as a function of the soil microbiome, proteome, and exometabolome

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Mary Firestone

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Soils store more carbon (C) than the atmosphere and biosphere combined, yet the fundamental mechanisms that regulate the persistence of this vast pool of C remain elusive. Soil organic matter (SOM)…

Redox And Reactive Minerals: The Impact Of Redox Fluctuations On Mineral-Organic Matter Associations And Microbial Carbon Transformations In Tropical Forest Soils

Lead Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Pett-Ridge

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

In tropical ecosystems, changes in future Earth Systems will likely affect both the amplitude and periodicity of redox oscillations due to predicted increases in temperature and changes in the…

Spatiotemporal Controls on Organic Matter Availability and Decomposition Rates across Floodplain Sediments

Lead Institution

Stanford University

Principal Investigator

Scott Fendorf

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Although depositional environments such as floodplains are key regulators of ecosystem carbon storage and downstream metal loadings, they are not very well represented in earth system models…

Beyond the rhizosphere: Microbial functional traits through the whole soil profile and their response to warming.

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Eoin Brodie

Project type

FICUS Research

The pathways of carbon transport and loss through and from soils--soil organic matter (SOM) depolymerization to dissolved organic carbon and mineralization to carbon dioxide (CO2)--are fundamentally…

Chemical Characteristics of Sediment Associated Organic Matter Untitled

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Peter Nico

Project type

Limited Scope

A significant body of evidence (Conant et al, 2011; Schmidt et al., 2011; Kleber, 2010) concludes that association of organic matter (OM) with minerals has a significant impact on the rate of carbon…

Chemical Characteristics of Sediment Associated Organic Matter

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Peter Nico

Project type

Exploratory Research

The goals of our proposed EMSL research are to develop methods for characterizing natural organic matter (NOM) that is associated with subsurface sediment using unique EMSL capabilities in FTICR MS,…

Dissolved Organic Matter Transformations in Wet Tropical Soils: The Effects of Redox Fluctuation

Lead Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Pett-Ridge

Project type

Special Science

In tropical systems, changes in climate will likely affect both the amplitude and periodicity of redox oscillations due to predicted increases in warming and precipitation intensity. Our research…

Microbial Carbon Transformations in Wet Tropical Soils: The Effects of Warming, Drying, and Redox Fluctuation

Lead Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Pett-Ridge

Project type

Exploratory Research

Tropical forest soils store more carbon (C) --as plant litter and decomposed organic matter-- than any other terrestrial ecosystem and play a critical role in the production of greenhouse gases …

X-ray computed tomography to incorporate redox conditions into soil carbon turnover models

Lead Institution

Oregon State University

Principal Investigator

Markus Kleber

Project type

Limited Scope

We propose to parameterize the tendency of a given soil structure (structure = the combination of diffusive domains and the surrounding spatial void pattern within a given soil volume, Figure 1) to…

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