Thème

Soil responses to drought and nutrients _ SOIL…

Financement et durée

Labex CEBA 2016

Chef(s) de projet

Elodie COURTOIS
Clément STAHL

Presentation du projet

Interactive effects of resources limitation (water and nutrients) on soil functioning remain poorly studied in tropical ecosystem. Understanding the impact of drought events and changes in nutrients availability on belowground microbial communities (structure and activity) is needed to clarify their importance on ecosystem functioning under climate changes. In this project, we propose to conduct an experiment under semi-natural condition in order to disentangle the effect of drought and nutrients availability on soil microbial diversity and activity. We will mimic predictions from global climate models (changes in nutrient stoichiometry and increase drought) by contrasting several treatments with or without rainfall exclusion and with or without nutrients addition (Nitrogen and/or Phosphorus). We will realize a set of measurement before and after treatment in order to characterize changes on belowground microbial communities. More specifically, we will (1) assess microbial community structure and diversity using DNA based technics and (2) estimate microbial activity by determining soil greenhouse gas exchange and enzyme activity. We will follow this experiment during several months (before and after treatment) in order to assess both the immediate effects of drought and nutrients addition on soil functioning and also the capacity of resilience of microbial communities.