© J. Helm/BGC

Department Biogeochemical Processes

Prof. Trumbore

The Biogeochemical Processes Division studies key processes and organisms that regulate the exchange of energy, water, and chemical compounds between ecosystems and their environments, and how these processes are affected by changes in climate and land use.

Within this broad goal, the Department maintains a focus on processes that are critical to understanding feedbacks between the land carbon cycle and climate and where lack of fundamental understanding currently limits the ability to predict the role of land as a source or sink for carbon in the coming decades to centuries. Broadly, the research in the Department shares the common goal to investigate processes that control how long carbon resides in ecosystem compartments, at spatial scales that span organisms to landscapes. Because of the importance of carbon to living organisms in storing energy and building structures, these processes are also fundamental to the functioning of ecosystems and their response to change.  

At the organism (microbe or plant) scale, we investigate how environmental controls such as drought or substrate availability influence resource allocation and activity in ways that can alter the timescales of carbon storage. At the ecosystem scale, we investigate how biotic (e.g. community diversity) and abiotic factors (mineralogy or climate) alter land-atmosphere exchange and the timescales for stabilization or destabilization of C in soils. At the landscape scale, we assess how disturbance processes such as fire, drought, windthrow and herbivory, can alter ecosystem carbon stocks and cycling.

Approaches and Tools

Quantifying responses and feedbacks in complex, coupled systems requires a range of tools and approaches. Laboratory experiments manipulate individual factors such as temperature, biodiversity or nutrient availability to document how different components of the ecosystem respond to changing environmental conditions. We participate in large field experiments that manipulate biodiversity (Jena experiment) and disturbances such as fire (Tanguro experiment).  Field observations of gradients of biodiversity through land management (Biodiversity Exploratories), or windthrows (ATTO) provide long-term field ‘experiments’.  Links to our own Theory group, as well as other modeling groups in the Institute allow us to use our results to test theories/models of ecosystem/organism function. We also actively develop new analytical tools that allow us to evaluate the importance of processes across a range of spatial and temporal scales.

Recent Publications

Chen, H.; Schroeter, S. A.; Lehmann, K.; Herrmann, M.; Totsche, K. U.; Gleixner, G.: Snowmelt seepage fluxes of dissolved organic matter in forest and grassland - a molecular-level case study from the Hainich critical zone exploratory, Germany. Frontiers in Earth Science (accepted)
Cole, L.; Goodall, T.; Jehmlich, N.; Griffiths, R. I.; Gleixner, G.; Gubry-Rangin, C.; Malik, A. A.: Land use effects on soil microbiome composition and traits with consequences for soil carbon cycling. ISME Communications (2024)
Hilman, B.; Solly, E. F.; Kuhlmann, I.; Brunner, I.; Hagedorn, F.: Species-specific reliance of trees on ectomycorrhizal fungi for nitrogen supply at an alpine treeline. Fungal Ecology 71, 101361 (2024)
Davies, A. B.; Levick, S. R.; van Rensburg, B. J.; Robertson, M. P.; Parr, C. L.: Context-dependent directional effects of termite mounds on soil nutrients, vegetation communities, and mammalian foraging. Ecosphere 15 (9), e4978 (2024)
Xia, Y.; Lalande, J.; Badeck, F.-W.; Girardin, C.; Bathellier, C.; Gleixner, G.; Werner, R. A.; Ghiasi, S.; Faucon, M.; Cosnier, K. et al.; Fresneau, C.; Tcherkez, G.; Ghashghaie, J.: Nitrogen nutrition effects on delta13C of plant respired CO2 are mostly caused by concurrent changes in organic acid utilisation and remobilisation. Plant, Cell and Environment (2024)
Eisenhauer, N.; Mueller, K.; Ebeling, A.; Gleixner, G.; Huang, Y.; Madaj, A.-M.; Roscher, C.; Weigelt, A.; Bahn, M.; Bonkowski, M. et al.; Brose, U.; Cesarz, S.; Feilhauer, H.; Guimaraes-Steinicke, C.; Heintz-Buschart, A.; Hines, J.; Lange, M.; Meyer, S. T.; Mohanbabu, N.; Mommer, L.; Neuhauser, S.; Oelmann, Y.; Rahmanian, S.; Sasaki, T.; Scheu, S.; Schielzeth, H.; Schmid, B.; Schloter, M.; Schulz, S.; Unsicker, S. B.; Vogel, C.; Weisser, W. W.; Fores, I.: The multiple-mechanisms hypothesis of biodiversity–stability relationships. Basic and Applied Ecology 79, pp. 153 - 166 (2024)
Nair, R.; Luo, Y.; El-Madany, T. S.; Rolo, V.; Pacheco-Labrador, J.; Caldararu, S.; Morris, K. A.; Schrumpf, M.; Carrara, A.; Moreno, G. et al.; Reichstein, M.; Migliavacca, M.: Nitrogen availability and summer drought, but not N:P imbalance, drive carbon use efficiency of a Mediterranean tree-grass ecosystem. Global Change Biology 30 (9), e17486 (2024)
Tangarife-Escobar, A.; Guggenberger, G.; Feng, X.; Munoz, E.; Chanca, I.; Peichl, M.; Smith, P.; Sierra, C.: Radiocarbon isotopic disequilibrium shows little incorporation of new carbon in mineral soils of a boreal forest ecosystem. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 129 (9), e2024JG008191 (2024)
Li, Y.; Schuldt, A.; Ebeling, A.; Eisenhauer, N.; Huang, Y.; Albert, G.; Albracht, C.; Amyntas, A.; Bonkowski, M.; Bruelheide, H. et al.; Bröcher, M.; Chesters, D.; Chen, J.; Chen, Y.; Chen, J.-T.; Ciobanu, M.; Deng, X.; Fornoff, F.; Gleixner, G.; Guo, L.; Guo, P.-F.; Heintz-Buschart, A.; Klein, A.-M.; Lange, M.; Li, S.; Li, Q.; Li, Y.; Luo, A.; Meyer, S. T.; von Oheimb, G.; Rutten, G.; Scholten, T.; Solbach, M. D.; Staab, M.; Wang, M.-Q.; Zhang, N.; Zhu, C.-D.; Schmid, B.; Ma, K.; Liu, X.: Plant diversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality via multitrophic diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024)
Machado, L. A. T.; Kesselmeier, J.; Botía, S.; van Asperen, H.; Andreae, M. O.; de Araújo, A. C.; Artaxo, P.; Edtbauer, A.; Ferreira, R. R.; Franco, M. A. et al.; Harder, H.; Jones, S. P.; Dias-Júnior, C. Q.; Haytzmann, G. G.; Quesada, C. A.; Komiya, S.; Lavrič, J. V.; Lelieveld, J.; Levin, I.; Nölscher, A.; Pfannerstill, E.; Pöhlker, M. L.; Pöschl, U.; Ringsdorf, A.; Rizzo, L.; Yáñez-Serrano, A. M.; Trumbore, S. E.; Valenti, W. I. D.; de Arellano, J. V.-G.; Walter, D.; Williams, J.; Wolff, S.; Pöhlker, C.: How rainfall events modify trace gas mixing ratios in central Amazonia. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 24 (15), pp. 8893 - 8910 (2024)

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