Award details

Maintaining soil resilience and function for sustainable land management

Reference	BBS/E/C/00004980
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Keith Goulding
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Andy Macdonald
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	266,585
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2008
End date	31/03/2012
Duration	48 months

Abstract

Sustainable land management practices are required that maintain soil quality and biodiversity and minimise diffuse pollution to air and water, i.e. maintain a range of ecosystem functions and services. The basic hypothesis of this project is that a better understanding and quantification of the biodiversity and the biotic and abiotic processes that occur in soils, through the exploitation of novel and conventional methods on long-term experiments, will identify important controls of nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions and pollutant removal and facilitate the development of such practices. Research within this project focuses on achieving a better understanding of the resilience to change of the key soil properties and processes involved in biogeochemical cycling, particularly of carbon and nitrogen. The long-term experiments and platform sites at Rothamsted, Woburn and North Wyke, present unique and invaluable resources for conducting research into biogeochemical cycling in stable ecosystems, the management of which is precisely defined and documented. The major focus of the project will be the initiation of a new and unique multidisciplinary experiment that will study the microbial diversity and function, carbon chemistry, soil architecture and nitrogen fluxes of 40 to 50-year old bare fallow, grass and arable soils on the Highfield Ley-Arable Experiment at Rothamsted, before and after changes of land use. Objectives: 1. To observe the transitions that accompany land use changes between fallow, arable and grassland using new techniques from the molecular level upward. 2. To study the impacts of land use and global change on carbon and nitrogen cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient losses to waters, and above- and below-ground biodiversity and develop improved land management practices.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Agri-food (AF)
Research Topics	Crop Science, Microbiology, Plant Science, Soil Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

I accept the terms and conditions of use (opens in new window)

export PDF file

back to list new search