Postdoctoral Fellowship: EAR-PF: Geomicrobiology in the Critical Zone- integrating subsurface microbial processes across spatial and temporal scales.

加州大学河滨分校的道森·费尔班克斯博士的这个EAR-PF项目探索了土壤微生物群落的多样性和功能在应对气候变化中所起的作用。这项工作的重点是美国和波多黎各不同规模的微生物群落对环境条件变化的反应。其目标是更深入地了解土壤对全球变化应激源的反应，以及土壤类型、植被和气候状况如何影响驱动土壤养分循环的微生物。这项工作的更广泛影响集中在教育和外联方面。通过实验室和实地学生项目，该奖学金将培训和准备下一代STEM研究人员。公众宣传活动和科学政策文献将提供有关该项目成果的信息。调查员还将通过一篇关于可持续管理实践的专栏文章让政策制定者参与进来。该项目旨在了解大陆范围内地下微生物功能的驱动因素。地下微生物群落在土壤健康、生物地球化学循环、土壤形成和碳储存方面发挥着关键作用，但对这些群落仍有许多需要了解的地方，特别是在大陆尺度上。该项目建立在以前工作的基础上，该工作确定了整个大陆范围内微生物生物多样性的驱动因素，其中一些地点没有显示出随深度的变化，而另一些地点则是微生物群落的完全更替。该项目的目标是了解不同气候梯度的底土微生物功能的差异及其对地球生物地球化学循环的影响。我假设，土壤类型、水文和岩性对确定地表影响(如植被和气候)驱动微生物群落组成和活动的深度至关重要。该项目将使用分子技术的组合，包括元基因组学和元转录组学，来分析收集的土壤样本。我还将进行统计分析，以确定不同土壤类型、植被和气候制度中微生物群落组成和功能的驱动因素。通过分析在美国大陆和波多黎各收集的数据，我的目标是确定决定地下微生物群落功能多样性的潜在因素。为了扩大包括LTER、NEON和CZNet在内的各种NSF网络的广泛元基因组研究，我将利用跨网络收集的数据将发现整合到更大的元基因组参考数据库中，以促进未来发现新的分类群和功能途径。这个项目的潜在贡献是巨大的。它将推进协调微生物分类群及其功能特征的分子信息的努力，促进它们与生态系统一级的数据整合。此外，它将使未来的元基因组学研究能够利用环境数据，从而促进微生物生态学的进一步研究。此外，该项目将对地下微生物群落在土壤健康、生物地球化学循环和碳储存方面的作用提供有价值的见解，这些作用对于在面临持续气候变化的情况下制定可持续管理做法至关重要。综上所述，该项目旨在加深我们对地下微生物群落的多样性和功能性的了解，确定不同区域和深度形成这些群落的驱动因素，并阐明它们对地球生物地球化学循环的影响。该项目的发现对于理解全球变化压力对土壤健康和碳储存的影响至关重要，从而为未来的可持续管理实践提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This EAR-PF project to Dr. Dawson Fairbanks, University of California-Riverside, explores the role that soil microbial communities’ diversity and functionality play in combating climate change. The work focuses on the responses of microbial communities to changing environmental conditions at a range of scales across the US and Puerto Rico. The goal is a deeper understanding of how soil responds to global change stressors and how soil types, vegetation, and climate regime influence the microbes that drive nutrient cycling in soil. Broader impacts of this work focus on education and outreach. Through lab and field-based student projects, this fellowship will train and prepare the next generation of STEM researchers. Public outreach events and science policy literature will provide information about the results of this project. The investigator will also engage policymakers through an op-ed about sustainable management practices. This project aims to understand the drivers of subsurface microbial functionality across continental scales. Subsurface microbial communities play a critical role in soil health, biogeochemical cycling, soil formation, and carbon storage, yet there is still much to learn about these communities, particularly at a continental scale. This project builds upon previous work, which identified drivers of microbial biodiversity across a continental scale, with some sites showing no change with depth and others a complete turnover of microbial communities. The goal of this project is to understand how subsoil microbial functionality differs across climate gradients and their impacts on Earth’s biogeochemical cycling. I hypothesize that soil type, hydrology, and lithology are critical to determining the depth to which surface influences such as vegetation and climate drive microbial community composition and activity. This project will use a combination of molecular techniques, including metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, to analyze the collected soil samples. I will also conduct statistical analyses to identify drivers of microbial community composition and function across different soil types, vegetation, and climate regimes. By analyzing data collected across the continental US and Puerto Rico, I aim to identify the underlying factors that determine the functional diversity of subsurface microbial communities. In order to scale the broad swath of metagenomic studies across various NSF networks, including LTER, NEON and CZNet, I will leverage data collected across networks to integrate discoveries into a larger metagenomic reference database to foster future discovery of novel taxa and functional pathways. The potential contributions of this project are significant. It will advance efforts to harmonize molecular information for microbial taxa and their functional traits, facilitating their integration with ecosystem-level data. Furthermore, it will enable future metagenomic studies to leverage environmental data, thereby stimulating further research in microbial ecology. Moreover, this project will provide valuable insights into the role of subsurface microbial communities in soil health, biogeochemical cycling, and carbon storage, which are essential for the development of sustainable management practices in the face of ongoing climate change. In summary, this project aims to deepen our understanding of the diversity and functionality of subsurface microbial communities, identify the drivers shaping these communities across different regions and depths, and elucidate their impacts on Earth's biogeochemical cycles. The findings of this project will be crucial for comprehending the effects of global change stressors on soil health and carbon storage, thus informing future sustainable management practices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.