Tipping points for ecosystem carbon cycling in warmer climates will be explored in a prestigious EU project

The ERC, established in 2007, is the largest and most important funder of excellent research in Europe. Among the in total 2453 applications submitted to this year's call for ERC Consolidator Grants, 303 researchers have been selected for funding, of which ten are active at seven Swedish universities. The underlying strategy of the generous grants awarded by ERC is to give researchers an opportunity to build up their research groups, and focus on making ground-breaking discoveries in their research fields. This is the fourth time that a researcher at SLU has been granted funding from ERC.

Originally from the Netherlands, Paul Kardol obtained his PhD at Wageningen University. In 2009, he was recruited to the Department of Forest Ecology and Management at SLU in Umeå, where today he holds a position as Associate Professor in ecology. In his research, Paul focuses on understanding how the dynamics between plant communities and soil organisms (microbes, nematodes, and other small critters) shape terrestrial ecosystems, and how such interactions are affected by natural disturbances, as well as effects caused by humans. With a starting point in basic ecological theory, Paul runs several projects aiming at creating an understanding of how climate change impacts the functioning of our ecosystems in a long term perspective.

"We need to broaden our horizon and go from analysing individual species, to studying the interaction between different organisms and entire ecosystems, to really clarify and be able to predict how global warming will affect our natural and managed ecosystems in the future", says Paul Kardol.

The funding from ERC will now help Paul Kardol and his research team at SLU to move forward in their search for new knowledge on terrestrial ecosystems, in a project entitled THRESHOLD - "Thresholds and tipping points in ecosystem responses to global warming". In THRESHOLD, Paul will investigate how carbon and nutrient cycling are changing in different ecosystems, as the climate gets warmer. The goal is to understand and be able to predict ecological "thresholds", i.e. when temperature changes suddenly cause major in ecosystems, and "tipping points", where these changes cause ecosystems to irreversibly change their nature and integrity. Paul is convinced that by analysing and understanding how the traits [DS3] of plants and soil organisms change in the short term, we can use this knowledge to predict future thresholds and tipping points in the longer term, and thus buy us time to introduce measures for mitigating the effects of climate change, before it is too late.

By collaborating with other researchers around the world, Paul's research team will explore ecosystems in 10 different locations across all inhabited continents, which together can provide insights into various possible future scenarios at a global level. In Abisko in the far North of Sweden, the group will also conduct ecological experiments in which they will push entire ecosystems across temperature thresholds, and in addition investigate the interactions between plants and soil organisms in laboratories and climate chambers at the SLU campus in Umeå.

"This ERC grant allows me to 'think big', run experiments for longer and at larger scales and test a broad range of potential future climate scenarios. It also allows me to expand and diversify my lab group and invest in new equipment necessary to tackle the current challenges in global change biology", says Paul Kardol.

More information

Paul Kardol, Associate Professor
Department of Forest Ecology and Management; Plant-soil feedbacks
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå
paul.kardol@slu.se, +46-90-786 83 98
https://www.slu.se/en/ew-cv/paul-kardol/
https://sites.google.com/site/paulkardol/home

Press release from ERC