+ 33 4 34 35 98 94 ecotron@cnrs.fr
SoilForEurope
2019-2021

Goals

By integrating research on the main forest ecosystems in Europe and using multiple tools and approaches ranging from genomics to socio-economics, SoilForEUROPE aims to establish a comprehensive scientific knowledge base on the importance of soil biodiversity in strategies for the management and production of soil goods and services in the context of climate change.

Number of rooms used

  • 16

Project duration

  • 36 months

 

Predicting European forest soil biodiversity and its functioning under ongoing climate change

Researchers

Stephan Hättenschwiler ; Alexandru Milcu ; Johanne Nahmani ; Sandra Barantal ; Pierre Ganault

Informations

This research is funded by the call for projects Europeen BiodivERsA COFUND 2015-2016, as well as by the National Agencies National Research Agency (ANR, France), Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO, Belgique), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Allemagne), Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO, Belgique), et The Swedish Research Council (FORMAS, Suède).   http://websie.cefe.cnrs.fr/soilforeurope/

In the experiment conducted on the mesocosm platform of the European Ecotron in Montpellier (16 units with a surface area of 1m2 and a soil depth of 1m each), we manipulate the functional diversity of soil fauna to test ecosystem responses to an extreme drought event. The use of Ecotron mesocosms allows us to test the interactive effects of increased soil functional diversity and extreme drought on H2O and CO2 fluxes at the ecosystem scale, and thus to assess the resistance and resilience of these composite ecosystems to intensified drought events.