Our project investigates the importance of soil micro-organisms for the services, and goods forests provide for us. We will compare protected forests with managed but similar ones in Europe and Brazil. We focus on forest biodiversity, carbon sequestration and cycling, as well as on edible mushroom production and how micro-organisms protect soils from erosion. The project uses soil DNA as a tool to understand the community composition of the soil microbiome. It will also use novel techniques to identify functional genes in the soil. Finally, ecosystem services are modelled on a larger scale using models, and their values are investigated from questionnaires. The project applicants are from Finland, Estonia, France, Italy, Spain and Brazil. In Finland, the project will employ a Post-doctoral researcher. Finnish field areas will be in Lieksa and Ilomantsi.

2023

2025