Soils store more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined, with soil microorganisms playing the main role. As a result, the global soil carbon cycle—by which carbon enters, moves through, ...

Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall -- how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by microbiologists.

Researchers discovered that microbes respire three times as much CO2 from lignin carbons compared to cellulose carbons. When soil microbes eat plant matter, the digested food follows one of two ...

Seventy percent of soils in Europe are contaminated with pesticides. A Europe-wide study co-led by researchers of the ...

As the planet has warmed, scientists have long been concerned about the potential for harmful greenhouse gasses to seep out of thawing Arctic permafrost. Recent estimates suggest that by 2100 the ...

Rows of gray plastic film stretch across a field of soil. Leafy green strawberry plants poke out of holes in the top of the film. Agricultural plastics, such as this mulch film covering strawberry ...

Bacteria that thrive on Earth may not make it in the alien lands of Mars. A potential deterrent is perchlorate, a toxic ...

Soil should be alive and it is a fact that chemical fertilizers kill the microbial activity in soil. Do we really need ...

In an interdisciplinary study, researchers discovered that symbiotic bacteria communicate with legume plants through specific molecules and that this communication influences which bacteria grow near ...