RELATE (Rhizosphere mediation of biosphere climate feedbacks)

The project’s mission is to advance the mechanistic understanding of biosphere-climate feedbacks by investigating the carbon cycle of wetland rhizospheres. Important project partners are the groups of Klaus-Holger Knorr (Universität Münster), Susanne Liebner (GFZ Potsdam), Pat Megonigal (Smithsonian), and Kai Jensen (Universität Hamburg) and Philipp Porada (Universität Hamburg).

We are particlurly interested in the function and fate of root exudates in wetland soils. For our research, we are combining a wide array of tools from the fields of functional plant ecology, soil biogeochemistry and molecular microbial ecology including planar optode imaging to assess the steep biogeochemical gradients in wetland rhizospheres, isotope labeling to trace carbon from the atmosphere through the plant into the soil system and back to the atmosphere, as well as greenhouse flux measurements.

Recent publications from the RELATE project:

Ecosystem state and soil depth determine the microbial community response to warming in coastal marsh soils - iScience 

Exudate-induced priming effects on anoxic peat are negative regardless of compound class and temperature - SBB

Root exudate profiles of wetland plants - a quantitative synthesis of secretion rates - Rhizosphere

Opposite priming responses to labile carbon versus oxygen pulses in anoxic peat - SBB

Redox control on rhizosphere priming in wetlands – Nature Geoscience