Alejandro Salazar
Contact
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alejandro_dot_lbhi_dot_is
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Links to:
0000-0002-0798-882X
Overview of my research
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Most of my research is focused on understanding how soil microbes respond to climate change and other stressors, how these responses affect ecosystem biogeochemistry and function and how to use this understanding to inform ecosystem models and environmental policies.
A significant part of my research has been dedicate to understand the role of microbial dormancy on soil carbon-climate feedbacks. Because of nutritional and environmental limitations, most microbes in soil are in a dormant state under which they can't drive biogeochemical processes. I have found, for example, that ignoring this survival strategy when modeling soil carbon responses to drying-wetting cycles, leads to unrealistic decreases of microbial biomass and respiration (Salazar et al., 2018).
Simulated changes in a) heterotrophic respiration (RH), b) total microbial biomass (TMB), and c) the fraction of active microbial biomass, after repeated rewetting events, using models with and without microbial dormancy (Salazar et al., 2018).
Conceptual representation of warming effects on N cycling and belowground communities in cold ecosystems. (Salazar et al., 2020).
about soil N responses to global warming. In a meta-analysis focused on cold ecosystems from high-latitudes, I found, for example, that experimental warming (e.g. with Open Top Chambers) generally increases N mineralization rates and N2O emissions, and the abundance of root and dissolved organic N. These changes seem to be more closely related to enzyme activity than to the abundance of N-relevant genes (Salazar et al., 2020).
Soil C cycling is intricately related to nitrogen (N) cycling. In comparison to soil C, we know much less
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More in my Publications