BMBF - BIOLOG / Project: DIVA

Relationship between genetic/phenotypic diversity and ecosystem processes such as carbon and nitrogen fluxes in grasslands in Thuringia as model ecosystems

Subproject:

"Soil carbon as well as soil fungi and mycorrhizal fungi in grassland ecosystems with different diversity"

Prof. Dr. François Buscot, Dr. Elke Schulz,
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Department Soil Ecology

Focus of subproject STOFF-MYKO is quantification of the four nodal points input, transformation, accumulation, and loss of carbon in and from soils and understanding biological mechanisms behind in relation to plant diversity and land use intensity in different grassland ecosystems. Concerning carbon input into soils, we will especially analyse mycorrhizal symbioses between soil fungi and plant roots as they directly channel important amounts of photo-assimilates into soils. These readily available matter and energy resources promote microbial activity in the rhizosphere and the bulk soil and have a high impact on the balance between litter mineralization and humification. These two processes cause a dynamic equilibrium between accumulation of more or less stable /stabilised fractions of organic carbon and their mineralization with corresponding carbon dioxide output from soils. The different nodes (mycorrhizza, microbial biomass, carbon accumulation and carbon dioxide output) are closely related to plant diversity but up to now mechanisms and interactions behind remain to disentangle.