Cultivation of crops have the potential to decrease soil carbon storage. And bioenergy crops are no different. Our projects uses coupled plant and microbial models to project how growing crops for biofuels impacts soil carbon, and whether the carbon benefit of biofuel burning will be offset by its agricultural impact.

• People: Stephanie Juice & Chris Walter
• Starting date: October 2019
• Collaborators: The Center for Advanced Bioenergy & Bioproducts at University of Illinois

We have designed an experiment to exclude 50% of rainfall from a temperate forest stand in Morgantown, WV. The experiment is testing how the extreme drought conditions predicted from climate change will change tree physiology and microbial function. We hypothesize the drought, like other environmental stressors, will weaken plant-microbial relationship and decrease carbon sequestration. If our hypothesis is correct, less carbon storage will become a positive feedback for climate change, creating more even extreme droughts.

• People: Nanette Raczka
• Starting date: June 2016
• Collaborators: The Elizabeth’s Woods Nature Preserve & the West Virginia Land Trust

Forests in the Eastern U.S. have received chronically high levels of nitrogen pollution - a consequence of coal burning. Nitrogen pollution has altered forests by changing how fast trees grow, the composition of plant species, and how much carbon they can store. All of these impacts have fundamentally disrupted plant and microbial interactions. We study this disruption in experimental forests in both Maine and West Virginia to determine whether plant-microbial interactions will remain decoupled as forests are continue to be threatened by greater environmental change in the future.

• People: Joe Carrara, Chris Walter
• Starting date: June 2015
• Collaborators: Mary Beth Adams, Bill Peterjohn, The Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia & the Bear Brook Watershed in Maine

Ecosystem models are limited by information about how microbial communities impact nutrient cycling. Until now, microbial communities have been treated as a 'black box' through which nutrients flow. We designed a and to simultaneously track the flow of carbon and nitrogen through plants and soil, while also monitoring how microbial communities change. We are using the information we gather to build the first ecosystem model to incorporate microbial community and metagenomic information.

• People: Chris Walter
• Starting date: January 2020
• Collaborators: Colin Averill, Jenny Bhatnagar, Zac Freedman, Ember Morrissey & Duke University Phytotron

The efficiency in how microbe use carbon to acquire additional nutrients is a key controller of decomposition and soil carbon storage. When microbes are exposed to excess nutrients in the environment they begin to become more carbon efficient, leading to greater carbon storage. We have created and experiment that.....

• People: Nanette Razcka & Joanna Ridgeway
• Starting date: June 2018
• Collaborators: Ember Morrissey

Our outreach program is designed to make our research accessible to our local and regional communities, while also providing a chance for people to interact with our experiments in the field. We hold two annual outreach events designed to expose children and adults to all aspects of ecosystems science.

• People: Eddie Brzostek, Joe Carrara, Nanette Raczka & Joanna Ridgeway
• Starting date: May 2017
• Collaborators: The Elizabeth’s Woods Nature Preserve & the West Virginia Land Trust