Marie Spohn and Anke Herrmann are since 2020 Professors at the Department of Soil and Environment. During 28-29 April they, and 13 other new SLU Professors, will give inspiring popular science presentations. These lectures are part of the inauguration ceremony for new professors.
Anke will give her presentation "Life underground: the diet of soil biota" on Wednesday the 28 of april at 12:30. Marie Spohn presentation is titeled "Element cycling in terrestrial ecosystems" and she will give it Thursday the 29:th of April at 9:10.
Each item on the programme will start with an introductory film clip and a conversation between the professor and the moderator. After the introduction, each professor will give a 15-minute popular science presentation before concluding with a Q&A session. The presentations will be broadcast live from SLU Uppsala and SLU Umeå. The broadcast will be available on this page. No prior registration is needed.
Element cycling in terrestrial ecosystems
Marie Spohn explores the cycling of carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems. She is specifically interested in interactions between different element cycles in soil. To gain a better understanding of element cycling, she uses a wide range of methods, including soil chemical analyses, isotopes as well as microbiological tools. During the last few years, she has studied soils in many regions including Chile, South Africa, and the US. In the future, she will focus on element cycling in temperate and boreal forest soils in Sweden.
Interactions between soil and soil-living organisms
Anke Herrmann´s research focuses on the dynamics of organic matter, the food of soil biota, in various agricultural soil ecosystems. Anke places special emphasis on the interactions between soil organic matter, the community composition of soil-living organisms and their habitats. These studies reveal the efficiency with which soil biota utilise food resources under different conditions. The turnover of soil organic matter exerts an important feedback control on climate change by regulating carbon losses to the atmosphere. Another important aspect of her research concerns the promotion of sustainable intensification of agriculture, by identifying appropriate management practices that improve the fertility of agricultural soils.
