CESD scientists are helping revolutionize understanding of how microbes interact with soils and plants. Microbial communities play key roles in all parts of ecosystems, from the aquifers that store our water, to the plants that give us fuel, food, and fiber, and across entire watersheds that influence Earth’s climate through water, carbon, and nutrient cycles. Due to the critical role microbes play in storing carbon in the soil, research into how microbes function and interact with soils and plants can lead to large-scale breakthroughs in our understanding of the environment and how it is influenced by climate change.

We develop novel-sensing technologies and capabilities that explore plant-soil-microbe interactions across scales, and are working to improve how these processes are represented in climate modeling. Additionally, CESD researchers have developed a fabricated ecosystem to help address the challenges of scaling plant-soil-microbial interactions from laboratory to the field research site.