Integrating microbial ecology into ecosystem models: challenges and priorities

Microbial communities can potentially mediate feedbacks between global change and ecosystem function, owing to their sensitivity to environmental change and their control over critical biogeochemical processes. Numerous ecosystem models have been developed to predict global change effects, but most do not consider microbial mechanisms in detail. In this idea paper, we examine the extent to which incorporation of microbial ecology into ecosystem models improves predictions of carbon (C) dynamics under warming, changes in precipitation regime, and anthropogenic nitrogen (N) enrichment. We focus on three cases in which this approach might be especially valuable: temporal dynamics in microbial responses to environmental change, variation in ecological function within microbial communities, and N effects on microbial activity. Four microbially-based models have addressed these scenarios. In each case, predictions of the microbial-based models differ—sometimes K. K. Treseder (&) Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. C. Balser Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin— Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA M. A. Bradford School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA E. L. Brodie E. A. Dubinsky Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA V. T. Eviner Department of Plant Sciences, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA K. S. Hofmockel Department of Ecology, Evolution, & Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA J. T. Lennon W. K. Kellogg Biological Station and the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, MI 49060, USA U. Y. Levine Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA B. J. MacGregor Department of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA J. Pett-Ridge NanoSIMS Group, Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Livermore, CA 94551-9900, USA M. P. Waldrop U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Road, M.S. 962, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA 123 Biogeochemistry (2012) 109:7–18 DOI 10.1007/s10533-011-9636-5