Ruud Rijkers

Research

I focus on how microbial communities influence and are influenced by climate change. For the past few years I've worked on microbial communities in terrestrial soil ecosystems and climate warming. With the large amount of organic carbon stored in soils, microbial communities decomposing this dead biomass have the potential to increase the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. We still don't know how much CO2 and methane might be released next century due to climate change. Therefore, I focus on the microbial responses in the region where most soil carbon is stored.