Soil microorganisms and plants are key players in the production and breakdown of organic matter, and together control global biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. TER, the Division of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research, aims to advance our fundamental understanding of how plants and soil microorganisms respond to, and in turn shape, their abiotic and biotic environment, and to determine the consequences for the functioning of Earth’s ecosystems.

Research Mission

Primarily dedicated to basic research, TER addresses pressing environmental issues, such as the impact of climate and land-use change on ecosystem functioning and the role of soils in the global carbon cycle and in food security. In doing so, we work on scales from µm (i.e. the scale at which microbes operate) to the biosphere (i.e. where plant and microbial processes become evident), and in ecosystems spanning the Arctic tundra to tropical rainforests. We integrate this scale of thinking with state-of-the-art methods, including stable isotope tracing and biomarker fingerprinting, and are developing novel approaches to estimate gross environmental processes with isotope pool dilution techniques.

We are strongly committed to conduct world-leading research in a motivating and intellectually stimulating environment, and to train our students to become independent and internationally competitive scientists who enjoy research and contribute to society as conscientious citizens.

Uni Wien/Der Knopfdruecker

Research Projects

SUP:RHIZE | Supply mechanisms of phosphorus in the rhizosphere in tropical soils – interactions of plants and microorganisms

Current Projects TER | Andreas Richter | Wolfgang Wanek | Christina Kaiser

The Amazon rainforest stores large amounts of carbon in plant biomass and in soils, and is an important sink for atmospheric CO2 setting off increased emissions from anthropogenic fossil fuel combustion and land use change. However, in large parts of the Amazon Basin plant productivity appears to be controlled by soil phosphorus availability, which could constrain the forest’s capacity to sequester more CO2 from the atmosphere.

Lucia Fuchslueger

Plants have developed multiple strategies to optimize nutrient acquisition from the soil to avoid phosphorus limitation – involving strong competition or tight cooperation with soil microorganisms. Yet, the scarcity of observations and the small scale, where plant-microbe interactions and microbe mediated nutrient cycling are occurring, currently constrains a quantitative upscaling of the prevailing strategies.

Within the SUP:RHIZE project I want to investigate plant and microbial interactions in rhizospheres of a tropical rainforest in Central Amazonia growing on highly weathered and phosphorus depleted soils. Using state-of-the art analytical methods and a combination of field, laboratory and modeling experiments, I aim to disentangle mechanisms that are facilitating phosphorus supply for plants and microbes by:

  • inquiring the influence of fine roots on the fate of phosphorus during leaf and root litter decomposition
  • identifying major phosphorus fluxes in the soil and characterizing microbial groups being responsible for soil phosphorus mineralization
  • tracing the fate of labile plant carbon inputs in the soil and their effect on phosphorus dynamics at the rhizosphere scale in tropical forest soils.
  • to estimate C use and C costs that are  involved in competition and cooperation between plants and microbes in the rhizosphere.

Links:

Collaboration:

  • Laynara F. Lugli and C. Alberto Quesada (INPA, Manaus, Brazil) and the AmazonFACE program
  • Anja Rammig and Katrin Fleischer at the chair of LSAI (TUM, Freising, Germany).

Investigated by: