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Webinar: Going Underground: Unearthing the Role of Soil Organisms in Plant Health
There are an estimated nonillion (1030) microbes on the planet and these organisms play a critical role in plant health. This presentation will take you belowground to explore the microorganisms beneath our feet and the role they play in the nutrient cycles critical to plant growth and ecosystem sustainability. How global change is altering the Earth’s microbiome will also be discussed.
In this presentation, Dr. Serita Frey will explore how the quality of the soil determines the capacity of land to support natural ecosystems and human society. As humanity becomes increasingly urbanized, the researchers have observed that fewer people have close contact with the soil, and individuals tend to lose sight of the many ways in which they depend on soils for their prosperity and survival. This presentation will explore the roles soils play in ecosystems, with a focus on how they affect plant health.
Dr. Serita Frey is a microbial ecologist with over 30 years of experience studying microbes in the environment. She received her Ph.D. in Ecology from Colorado State University and is currently a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of New Hampshire where she teaches and advises in the environmental sciences program. Her research examines how environmental change is altering the structure and function of forest ecosystems, with an emphasis on soil microbial communities and nutrient cycling processes. She is specifically interested in how anthropogenic stressors (e.g., climate change, nitrogen deposition, invasive species) affect the composition and diversity of soil microbial communities and microbial-mediated carbon and nitrogen cycles. Her research group works at the interface between ecosystem science, microbial ecology and global change biology, combining microbiological and -omics tools with stable isotope analysis and a variety of soil physical and chemical approaches to examine structure-function linkages.
