DAAD PRIME postdoctoral fellowship of Dr. Peter Müller
11 December 2019, by Lars Kutzbach
Dr. Peter Müller started his DAAD PRIME postdoctoral fellowship this month. During his fellowship, he will be studying the effects of global warming on soil carbon stocks of coastal ecosystems at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (United States) and the Institute of Soil Science at Universität Hamburg. He will be hosted by the working group “Soils in the Climate System” led by Prof. Dr. Lars Kutzbach. The DAAD PRIME program exists since 2014 and has been funded by the BMBF and the European Union (EU/FP7/Marie Curie Actions/COFUND). Funding for postdoctoral researchers is provided for 18 months, in which 12 months have to be spent abroad and 6 months at a German university.
Dr. Müller’s research will be conducted in the framework of the worldwide only two experimental field sites conducting deep soil warming in tidal wetlands, operated by the Smithsonian and Universität Hamburg. Tidal wetlands (i.e. marshes and mangroves) are among the most effective carbon (C) sinks of the biosphere, mitigating climate change through the long-term removal of atmospheric CO2. Global warming can reduce the capacity of ecosystems to sequester C by stimulating microbial decomposition processes. Because rising atmospheric temperatures will increase soil temperatures over several meters depth, it is particularly important to assess the extent of warming-stimulated microbial decomposition in ecosystems with large and deep-reaching soil organic C stocks, such as tidal and non-tidal wetlands. However, the current state of science on the stability of subsoil C stocks in a warming climate is limited by a near absence of robust experimental data. The objective of Dr. Müller’s research is to provide the temperature-sensitivity assessment of tidal-wetland C stocks by studying the warming response of microbial activity and community structure in relation to soil depth.
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