Increasing the Earth's forest cover is one of the most important strategies to limit the global warming. Especially the boreal latitudes are suggested to be important regions to support the growth of trees. Despite, forests are ultimately important in carbon sequestration, they can also contribute to the emission of strong greenhouse gas, methane. However, mechanistic background of the aerobic methane emission is mostly unknown. Aim of the proposed project is to unravel the role of moss-associated bacterial community in the carbon and methane flux by combining novel methods in forest ecology and molecular microbiology. The work will provide new knowledge on the bacterial contribution in aerobic methane net emission and carbon flux in forest floor moss-bacteria communities. Generated results will further be used in the model design to estimate accurately boreal forest carbon sequestration in the future.

2020

2025