- Belen Muñiz
- Soil Organic Matter in North American Temperate Forests
- Integrative Biology
Describe
your research
experience
My research interests include global change ecology, and the development and application of Earth System models to track the changing climate.
Soil organic matter (SOM) is one of the largest Carbon (C) pools in the biosphere. The ability of these pools to store carbon, and the movement of carbon in and out of these pools, may be affected by the changing climate, specifically the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. A change in carbon storage abilities in these pools can then have negative or positive feedbacks on climate change. The two major mycorrhizal lineages (Ectomycorrhizal [EMF] and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal [AMF] Fungi) are known to interact differently with SOM. Specifically, ECM and AM utilize different forms of nitrogen from the soil. Importantly, this leads to the impactful observation EMF forest soils store more organic carbon than AMF forest soils. In order to explore the interaction of EMF and AMF with the nitrogen cycle, we conducted stable isotope nitrogen pool dilution experiments at various points throughout the year. In these experiments, we sampled soil from temperate forests in southern Indiana and analyzed for net and gross rates of nitrification, denitrification, and mineralization of N. Through the use of net and gross rate measurements, a more developed framework of the mycorrhizae and microbial communities impact on carbon storage can be developed.
As one of the recipient's of OUR's Research Support Grant (2017), the results of Belen's research can be found here.
