The Microbial and Ecosystem Ecology Unit focuses on understanding how environmental changes, such as land use and climate change, affect terrestrial microbial communities, particularly those that are symbiotically associated with plants and play crucial roles in organic matter decomposition and nutrient transformation in the soil. We further examine how these shifts influence ecosystem functions such as carbon and nutrient cycling, with particular emphasis on soil carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as levels of environmental pathogens. Our methods encompass fieldwork, greenhouse experiments, and chemical analyses, in addition to cutting-edge molecular analyses and bioinformatic analyses, such as amplicon sequencing, metagenome, and meta-transcriptome analyses.
