Sustainable use of soil resources in the changing climate

About this project

<p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">European tundra and boreal forest ecosystems will experience one of the strongest impacts of climate change on the Earth. These habitats and northern temperate ecosystems will become disproportionately warmer compared with other global biomes according to the general averaged climate change scenarios. Because living organisms exhibit physiological optima for temperature and specific requirements for habitat quality, rapid shifts in vegetation and entire biomes pose the greatest challenges to cope with under global change. In the current epoch of unprecedentedly rapid climate change, further human interventions may offer both threats and opportunities to restore ecosystem services and mitigate ecological and economic damage. We, the humans, can actually control much of the greenhouse gas emissions related to land use shifts, agricultural and forestry practices by determining and implementing ‘climate-friendly’ ways of management and sustainable use of soil resources in agriculture and forestry from the global change perspective. In particular, due to their effect on both productivity and soil processes, certain land use and forest management practices can be helpful for promoting soil C storage.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">This project has five principal objectives.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">Obj1: To develop novel molecular methods for rapid abundance assessment of various microbial groups and their potential of organic degradation and carbon release.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">Obj2: To determine shifts in carbon allocation in plants and carbon sequestration in soil along the latitudinal gradient in response to climate change.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">Obj3: To evaluate the economic costs and benefits of changing climate on various aspects of forestry and soil carbon balance.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">Obj4: To determine ecological sustainability of afforestation of former agricultural land.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: &quot;Calibri&quot;, sans-serif">Obj5: To develop sustainable forestry and other land use practices to mitigate the negative effects of climate change on one hand and securing forest productivity on the other hand.</span></span></p>

Bilateral cooperation results

The partners discussed their research interests and possibilities and jointly established the research objectives as well as the schemes of sampling and analytical procedures. All partners took part in sampling. Contribution by UT: CO2 emission measurement training to the Lithuanian partner. Bioinformatics and data analysis, development and testing of the UNISPIKE molecule, development and analysis of target capture DNA barcodes. Metagenomics and transcriptomics data. It was crucial to have a donor partner in the project because of their expertise in plant ecology and statistics related to community ecology. This secured proper experiment planning, detailed identification of plants and sound statistical analyses. Contribution by UiT: Experimental design, data analysis, participation in large scale sampling and technical and professional contribution to studies led by the Estonian team. Contribution by Silava: Studies of forest regeneration and afforestation of marginal lands including peatlands to improve efficiency of forest regeneration; Vegetation monitoring and light transmission through canopy measurements. Contribution by LAMMC: successions of soil microbial communities in light-textured soil using various organic fertilizers; energy plant cultivation for solid biofuel (including using of sewage sludge compost as fertilizer of energy crops) in the context of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and of improving soil chemical properties; preparation of soil for chemical and metagenomic analysis. During the project activities, participants successfully cooperated and shared their knowledge. A strong team has been formed with plans to cooperate in the future and write new publications using the data from this project. We plan to prepare and, if we succeed, implement new international projects together with project partners from different countries to broaden our collaborative network to Southern and Western Europe.

Project partners

• University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway Donor project partner· Norway
• Lithuanian Research Centre of Agriculture and Forestry Project partner· Lithuania
• Latvian State Forst Research Institute SILAVA Project partner· Latvia