The CLIMACT seminar series “A Climate of Transformation” is an interactive online event. It takes place twice a month, every second Monday during your lunch break, with two new speakers.
Each episode aims to strengthen the dialogue and collaboration between key UNIL and EPFL scientists, swiss politicians, entrepreneurs and various actors from the civil society, through collective reflection.
A wide range of climate change-related topics will be discussed, integrating perspectives from all sectors and academic disciplines in order to generate new leads and initiatives towards systemic solutions.
Your expertise, ideas, critical thinking and vision for the future is essential. Join CLIMACT in the discussion!
Mapping Carbon Flow through Soils: Ecosystem and Global Impact
Presented by Marco Keiluweit I Professor at the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, UNIL
Soils contain the largest dynamic stock of carbon (C) on the planet, with soil organic matter (SOM) containing approximately twice the amount of C stored in the surface oceans and three-times that in the atmosphere. Yet it remains largely unknown why some SOM persists for millennia whereas other SOM decomposes readily—and this limits our ability to predict how soils will respond to climate and land use change. Recent analytical and experimental advances have undermined the long-standing theory that molecular structure alone controls SOM turnover; instead, SOM turnover is now considered an ecosystem property, rendering associated C stocks much more vulnerable to environmental change. In this talk, I will highlight how plants, microbes, and minerals interact to regulate SOM turnover within soil ecosystems. I will further show that explicit consideration of such ecosystem controls, together with climatic variables, is critical for improved predictions of soil carbon-climate feedbacks as well as management strategies aimed at sustaining soil health.
Electron transfer reactions in soils: implications for biogeochemical element cycling Presented by Meret Aeppli I Professor at the Soil biogeochemistry Laboratory of ENAC, EPFL
Electron transfer (redox) reactions are central to the transformation of energy in the environment and play an important role in the cycling of elements. In soils, one of the main drivers of carbon cycling is the activity of organisms that utilize the energy stored in soil organic matter by extracting electrons from organic carbon and transferring them to various electron acceptors. Yet, our understanding of this process is incomplete and the response of the soil carbon pool to climate change remains one of the primary sources of uncertainty in projections of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Here, I highlight the relevance of redox reactions in soils and, specifically, the role of redox-active minerals in soil carbon cycling under oxygen-limited conditions.
Practical information
General public
Free
Organizer
Julia Steinberger, University of Lausanne
Athanasios Nenes, EPFL
