Center for Metagenomic Microbial Community Analysis
Microbial Communities as Mineral Producers
Ongoing work at Wellington Field, Kansas. seeks to elucidate microbial controls, including biosurfactant production, on oil recovery
Linking Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Transformations to Land Use HIstory and Climate Change
We investigate the linkages between carbon- and nitrogen-transforming microbial communities in soils from systems ranging from warm temperate forests in SE North America to the tallgrass prairies and forests of the Midwest to the boreal forests of Canada.
Shifting Microbial Communities To Alter Ecosystem Management
We explore how soil fungal communities change with different land use histories including degradation and conversion to pastureland. Using known, culturable fungi from these different sites we can assess if controlled additions can accelerate the restoration of native plant communities.
Population Dynamics in Wastewater Treatment
Wastewater treatment relies on the selection of complex microbial communities. We investigate how to design and operate biological reactors to select for diverse populations with varying nutritional needs. In particular, we have investigated how varying the food to microorganism ratio and sludge residence time affects species diversity.
Assessing Resevoirs for CO2 Storage
The Arbuckle aquifer in SE Kansas is a deep, saline aquifer that is targeted for CO2 injection and storage. We use geochemical and microbial data from aquifer fluids and cores to assess (and ground truth) remote borehole data that suggests that the aquifer is a secure reservoir for long term injection. Our continuing work deals with how microbial processes (growth, mineral dissolution/precipitation) will impact porosity and permeability over the lifetime of injection/storage.
Quantifying Changing Microbial Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics in Discrete Temperature Regimes
Living (green) and dead (red) bacterial cells sampled from a chemostat in which microbial carbon uptake, transformations, and release as CO2 are quantified in different temperature regimes.
Microbes Sedimentation as Modern Analogues for Petroleum Reservoirs.
Crooked Island, Bahamas. The Bahamas represent a modern analogue for many productive petroleum reservoirs. We are investigating microbial ecology and microbial controls on sediment formation to better constrain porosity and permeability models for these systems. The one with the belly button is a microbial mat
Microbial Methane Production in Thawing Permafrost
Ongoing fieldwork in Svalbard. We are investigating the role of soil geochemistry on methanotroph ecology and linking these data to methane emission from permafrost soils.
