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Soil Microbes and Agriculture

KBS LTER scientists found that soil microbial diversity is not much affected by land management, except for those groups of microbes involved in specific metabolic processes such as the production and consumption of the important greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide. This introduces an interesting potential for managing soil microbial diversity to provide specific ecosystem services such as greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture.

Levine, U.Y., T.K. Teal, G.P. Robertson and T.M. Schmidt (2011). Agriculture's impact on microbial diversity and associated fluxes of carbon dioxide and methane. The ISME Journal. In Press.
Eichorst, S.A., C.R. Kuske and T.M. Schmidt (2011). Influence of plant polymers on the distribution and cultivation of bacteria in the phylum Acidobacteria. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 77:586-96.
Dr. Tom Schmidt
KBS 89, a bacterial strain from the phylum Acidobacteria that was isolated from KBS LTER soils. Acidobacteria are one of the most abundant groups of bacteria in soils from agricultural and forested sites.
Michigan State University Center for Advanced Microscopy
The rate of methane consumption by soils at the KBS LTER is related to the diversity of methane oxidizing bacteria present. Methane consumption is lowest in sites managed for row-crop agriculture (red triangle), and increases in early successional sites (orange square), managed grasslands (blue diamond), and both successional (yellow triangle) and deciduous forests (green circle).
Levine, Teal, Robertson and Schmidt (2011) ISME Journal, In Press.

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