ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7040-1924
Current Organisations
University of Zurich
,
Agroscope Standort Reckenholz
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-11-2017
DOI: 10.1038/S41564-017-0062-X
Abstract: The emergence of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods provides unprecedented opportunities to further unravel bacterial bio ersity and its worldwide role from human health to ecosystem functioning. However, despite the abundance of sequencing studies, combining data from multiple in idual studies to address macroecological questions of bacterial ersity remains methodically challenging and plagued with biases. Here, using a machine-learning approach that accounts for differences among studies and complex interactions among taxa, we merge 30 independent bacterial data sets comprising 1,998 soil s les from 21 countries. Whereas previous meta-analysis efforts have focused on bacterial ersity measures or abundances of major taxa, we show that disparate licon sequence data can be combined at the taxonomy-based level to assess bacterial community structure. We find that rarer taxa are more important for structuring soil communities than abundant taxa, and that these rarer taxa are better predictors of community structure than environmental factors, which are often confounded across studies. We conclude that combining data from independent studies can be used to explore bacterial community dynamics, identify potential 'indicator' taxa with an important role in structuring communities, and propose hypotheses on the factors that shape bacterial biogeography that have been overlooked in the past.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.TPLANTS.2015.03.004
Abstract: Substantial amounts of nutrients are lost from soils via leaching and as gaseous emissions. These losses can be environmentally damaging and expensive in terms of lost agricultural production. Plants have evolved many traits to optimize nutrient acquisition, including the formation of arbuscular mycorrhizas (AM), associations of plant roots with fungi that acquire soil nutrients. There is emerging evidence that AM have the ability to reduce nutrient loss from soils by enlarging the nutrient interception zone and preventing nutrient loss after rain-induced leaching events. Until recently, this important ecosystem service of AM had been largely overlooked. Here we review the role of AM in reducing nutrient loss and conclude that this role cannot be ignored if we are to increase global food production in an environmentally sustainable manner.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2022
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-04-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-05-2022
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-022-01756-5
Abstract: Soil fungi are fundamental to plant productivity, yet their influence on the temporal stability of global terrestrial ecosystems, and their capacity to buffer plant productivity against extreme drought events, remain uncertain. Here we combined three independent global field surveys of soil fungi with a satellite-derived temporal assessment of plant productivity, and report that phylotype richness within particular fungal functional groups drives the stability of terrestrial ecosystems. The richness of fungal decomposers was consistently and positively associated with ecosystem stability worldwide, while the opposite pattern was found for the richness of fungal plant pathogens, particularly in grasslands. We further demonstrated that the richness of soil decomposers was consistently positively linked with higher resistance of plant productivity in response to extreme drought events, while that of fungal plant pathogens showed a general negative relationship with plant productivity resilience/resistance patterns. Together, our work provides evidence supporting the critical role of soil fungal ersity to secure stable plant production over time in global ecosystems, and to buffer against extreme climate events.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2022
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-01-2019
DOI: 10.1111/NPH.15602
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.TREE.2017.11.005
Abstract: In agricultural and natural systems researchers have demonstrated large effects of plant-soil feedback (PSF) on plant growth. However, the concepts and approaches used in these two types of systems have developed, for the most part, independently. Here, we present a conceptual framework that integrates knowledge and approaches from these two contrasting systems. We use this integrated framework to demonstrate (i) how knowledge from complex natural systems can be used to increase agricultural resource-use efficiency and productivity and (ii) how research in agricultural systems can be used to test hypotheses and approaches developed in natural systems. Using this framework, we discuss avenues for new research toward an ecologically sustainable and climate-smart future.
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 2013
DOI: 10.1071/BT12225
Abstract: Plant functional traits are the features (morphological, physiological, phenological) that represent ecological strategies and determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels and influence ecosystem properties. Variation in plant functional traits, and trait syndromes, has proven useful for tackling many important ecological questions at a range of scales, giving rise to a demand for standardised ways to measure ecologically meaningful plant traits. This line of research has been among the most fruitful avenues for understanding ecological and evolutionary patterns and processes. It also has the potential both to build a predictive set of local, regional and global relationships between plants and environment and to quantify a wide range of natural and human-driven processes, including changes in bio ersity, the impacts of species invasions, alterations in biogeochemical processes and vegetation–atmosphere interactions. The importance of these topics dictates the urgent need for more and better data, and increases the value of standardised protocols for quantifying trait variation of different species, in particular for traits with power to predict plant- and ecosystem-level processes, and for traits that can be measured relatively easily. Updated and expanded from the widely used previous version, this handbook retains the focus on clearly presented, widely applicable, step-by-step recipes, with a minimum of text on theory, and not only includes updated methods for the traits previously covered, but also introduces many new protocols for further traits. This new handbook has a better balance between whole-plant traits, leaf traits, root and stem traits and regenerative traits, and puts particular emphasis on traits important for predicting species’ effects on key ecosystem properties. We hope this new handbook becomes a standard companion in local and global efforts to learn about the responses and impacts of different plant species with respect to environmental changes in the present, past and future.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 22-07-2018
DOI: 10.1002/ECE3.4346
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-03-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41558-023-01627-2
Abstract: Increasing the number of environmental stressors could decrease ecosystem functioning in soils. Yet this relationship has not been globally assessed outside laboratory experiments. Here, using two independent global standardized field surveys, and a range of natural and human factors, we test the relationship between the number of environmental stressors exceeding different critical thresholds and the maintenance of multiple ecosystem services across biomes. Our analysis shows that having multiple stressors, from medium levels ( %), negatively and significantly correlates with impacts on ecosystem services and that having multiple stressors crossing a high-level critical threshold (over 75% of maximum observed levels) reduces soil bio ersity and functioning globally. The number of environmental stressors exceeding the % threshold was consistently seen as an important predictor of multiple ecosystem services, therefore improving prediction of ecosystem functioning. Our findings highlight the need to reduce the dimensionality of the human footprint on ecosystems to conserve bio ersity and function.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-03-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-023-37428-6
Abstract: Soil contamination is one of the main threats to ecosystem health and sustainability. Yet little is known about the extent to which soil contaminants differ between urban greenspaces and natural ecosystems. Here we show that urban greenspaces and adjacent natural areas (i.e., natural/semi-natural ecosystems) shared similar levels of multiple soil contaminants (metal(loid)s, pesticides, microplastics, and antibiotic resistance genes) across the globe. We reveal that human influence explained many forms of soil contamination worldwide. Socio-economic factors were integral to explaining the occurrence of soil contaminants worldwide. We further show that increased levels of multiple soil contaminants were linked with changes in microbial traits including genes associated with environmental stress resistance, nutrient cycling, and pathogenesis. Taken together, our work demonstrates that human-driven soil contamination in nearby natural areas mirrors that in urban greenspaces globally, and highlights that soil contaminants have the potential to cause dire consequences for ecosystem sustainability and human wellbeing.
No related grants have been discovered for Marcel van der Heijden.