Effects of warming on methane production and consumption in tropical and Arctic peatlands
Duration of contract: 3 year PostDoc (or 4 year PhD)
Planned starting date: Summer 2024
Place of work: University of Vienna
Main supervisor: Andreas Richter (CV | Lab Homepage)
Supervision team: Matthias Horn, Christina Kaiser, Christine Moissl-Eichinger
Project description:
The Postdoc (or PhD) in this work package will be responsible for experiments addressing the question how global warming affects the methanogenic and methanotrophic microbial communities in peatlands soil. Methane (and to a lesser extend also nitrous oxide) production and consumption shall be comparatively analyzed in permafrost peatland (Canadian Arctic) and tropical peatland soils (DR Congo).
The Postdoc's specific focus will be on estimating warming effects the methane cycling communities (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics) as well as the changing microbial community composition (bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, viruses). Additionally, we will employ isotope pool dilution experiments for estimating gross production and consumption processes in the methane, sulfate and phosphorus cycle (13C, 35S, and 33P), and quantitative stable isotope probing (18O, 13C, 2H) to assess microbial activity and growth.
Links:
