Session: Soil Nitrogen Cycling, When Does Community Matter? Oral

Title: Soil Nitrogen Cycling, When Does Community Matter? Oral

Session Description: Characterization of the composition of microbial communities responsible for nitrogen cycling in soils has been advanced greatly by metagenomics and high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies. However, it is often unclear how diversity within microbial functional groups relates to process rates or extent of the process in the soil environment. Research contributions linking community to soil function and process rates for nitrogen transformations through combinations of isotopic signatures, metagenomics and HTS will be highlighted. Findings from both field studies and experimental manipulations will be discussed.