Fungi, bacteria and viruses that live in the soil, collectively known as “soil microbes”, are underappreciated ecological workhorses.
“They cycle nitrogen, they fix atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available forms, they return a fixed nitrogen into atmospheric forms…they detoxify potential pollutants. They do many things in the soil that we sort of don't see most of the time, but are happening there and benefiting us,” said Joshua Schimel, professor of soil ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Schimel studies soil microbes, and how they affect the ecosystem they inhabit.
Exploring how these microbes operate across broad scales, he said, can give us a better understanding of how ecosystems function, and how that affects the plants and animals that inhabit those ecosystems.
“We can study them at their own level and understand the microbiology, but we often need to understand how that scales up to describe an overall ecosystem,” Schimel said. “So how does decomposition regulate what happens at the ecosystem [level]?”
Beyond his focus on soil microbes, Schimel is an advocate for science communication. Despite the prevalent “publish or perish” mentality in academia, Schimel said scientists are rarely taught how to write about their research in a clear and compelling way.
“Writing a science paper is telling a story about nature. And understanding story and how stories are structured, is something that real writers, fiction writers, and nonfiction professional writers understand. And as academics, we often don't, and we need to,” Schimel emphasized.
Check out Schimel’s introductory science communication book, Writing Science.
Schimel will be speaking at USU’s Logan campus this Wednesday and Thursday at 4pm, in LSB 133.
