Plant-soil interactions

Soil biodiversity

Terrestrial plants depend on soils for their fundamental resources, such as water and nutrients. Moreover, plants also affect resource availability in soils by modifying soil conditions. Plants can therefore affect soil biotic interactions when they modify soil abiotic conditions, which subsequently affect plant themselves. Such dynamic plant-soil interactions are crucial for the regulation of terrestrial ecosystem functioning. We study how extreme drought and heat waves affect such plant-soil interactions using a variety of experimental approaches.