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Global Adaptation of soil Microbes under Environmental Change

Project description

Microbial adaptation effects for climate projections

Current soil carbon models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lack sophistication, leading to uncertainty about soils’ roles as carbon sinks or sources. Microbe-explicit models hold promise for improving predictions, yet challenges arise from limited data and high microbial variability, which is influenced by eco-evolutionary processes. The ERC-funded GAMEchange project aims to address this by using recent microbial genomic data to develop advanced biogeochemical models that reflect microbial adaptation impacts on soil organic carbon (SOC). Through an innovative emulation method, GAMEchange will integrate a genome-parameterised microbial model with a vegetation land model, enabling comparison of SOC predictions for 2100 with and without microbial adaptation. This project will set the foundation for more precise microbial modelling in future IPCC climate forecasts.

Objective

The representation of soil carbon in models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) remains significantly underdeveloped, leading to uncertainty concerning some models predicting soils as carbon sinks and others as sources of carbon dioxide. The development of microbe-explicit models is a very promising avenue for avoiding such inconsistencies and obtaining more accurate soil organic carbon (SOC) predictions. However, these models still suffer from uncertain parameterization due to the lack of data and the high variability in microbial responses at the ecosystem scale. These issues are especially true in carbon-rich northern high-latitude soils that are most vulnerable to large SOC loss with global change. The variability in microbial response at the ecosystem scale is rooted in intricate microscale eco-evolutionary adaptive processes, namely evolution, dispersal, and filtering of community diversity. The diversity in microbiomes, resulting from past selection, influences present adaptive capacity and is referred to as the contingency effect. The GAMEchange project will harness a recent surge of novel microbial genomic data in order to parameterize a new generation of biogeochemical model that accounts for the effect of microbial adaptation on SOC, including contingency effects. GAMEchange will couple the genome-parameterized microscale microbial model with a vegetation land model using a novel emulation approach. This novel coupled model will allow us to compare the 2100 SOC predictions with and without microbial adaptation. This project will produce the first coupled soil microbe-land model parameterized with genomic data, laying the foundation for more realistic microbial models for IPCC climate projections.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITE DE VERSAILLES SAINT-QUENTIN EN YVELINES
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 775,00
Address
AVENUE DE PARIS 55
78035 VERSAILLES
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Yvelines
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 775,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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