Student assistant in Forest plant-soil biogeochemistry (f/m/x)

Job description

Student assistant in Forest plant-soil biogeochemistry (f/m/x) The job: Forests are facing an intensification of environmental disturbances due to changes in climate and management. These pose threats to forest biodiversity and the ecosystem services forests provide to society, such as watershed protection, timber production, and recreation. Trees are especially challenged by disturbances, as evidenced by multiple recent tree mortality events reported in many forests globally. Reductions in tree health may reduce the potential of forests to mitigate ongoing climate change, and to act as a large carbon sink also in the future. Uncertainty on the future fate of forests, in part, stems from the fact that most current research on forest functional responses to disturbances focuses on the leaf or aboveground plant scale, providing limited insight into how disturbances affect belowground biological and geochemical processes. Belowground processes are crucial, however, as they sustain the storage of about 30%-70% of forest organic carbon in soils, and regulate the retention of water and nutrients essential for tree growth and life on Earth. Our aim is to unravel how changes in environment...