Research Seminar (VERY suitable for EMSD)

Please note below details of a timely seminar, following recent publication of the IPCC 5th assessment WG1 report, that will be given by Professor Richard Bardgett (University of Manchester) next Tuesday (22/10) between 1-2 pm in SB2.10, Sandra Burslem Building.

Going underground: plant functional traits, soil microbial feedbacks and climate change

Professor Richard D Bardgett

Faculty of Life Sciences, Michael Smith Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PT.

Human activities are rapidly changing the world’s ecosystems. The most obvious human impact is through the conversion of land for agriculture, but terrestrial ecosystems are also affected by other global change phenomena, including climate change. This has led to a groundswell of research aimed at improving understanding of the impact of global changes on biodiversity and ecosystem function, and on management strategies to mitigate them. Whilst this topic has received much attention, scientists have only recently become aware that understanding the consequences of global change for ecosystem functioning requires consideration of interactions between plant and soil communities. This is because the impact of global changes on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems is often indirect: they operate via changes aboveground that cascade belowground to the soil biological community, which drives biogeochemical processes and feedbacks to the Earth’s climate system. In this talk, I will discuss recent research that shows how a plant trait-based approach can be used to improve understanding of the way that changes in plant community structure impact on soil microbial communities and the processes that they drive, and to better understand the consequences of global change for ecosystem functioning.

(Host: Dr. Robin Sen)

Please note that a campus map is available HERE