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Title: Symposium--Marginal Lands: Biotic Forces Impacting Ecosystem Resilience
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Format: Oral Symposium
Keywords: Marginal lands and Soil-plant-microbe interactions
Session Description: Extreme weather events pose an increasing threat to land productivity and the long-term resiliency of ecosystems. The threat is far greater for marginal lands characterized by poor soil quality and low ecosystem capacity as a result of aridity, cold, fire or anthropogenic disturbances. Managing Global Land-Resources For a Secure Future requires an interdisciplinary approach for identifying forces that interact to sustain or degrade marginal systems; i.e. biodiversity, microbe-mediated processes, plant-soil-microbe interactions, nutrient cycling, trophic dynamics, and organism interactions. This symposium will integrate plant and microbial ecologists with soil scientists to debate integrated strategies to sustain or reclaim marginal lands.