Andrew Cole (Mentor)
I am a PhD student at Lancaster University and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. I study how plants and soils will respond to climate change. I love being outside walking in the Lake District.
Activity
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Hi Martin it would be possible to do this at home for plants in pots which you could weight to do determine the amount of water held in the soil. However it is primarily of importance for food producers who want plants to grow in optimum conditions and for whom the extra time needed is worth the investment. As you say it is certainly most appropriate to...
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Hi Sarah, there are certainly plants which will grow in acid conditions, but I'm not sure about trying to mitigate changes in pH.
Do others know anything about this topic? -
Hi Sarah, it would more be a case of all the organisms which live in the soil adapting to their conditions. The soil will certainly develop over time and this will be shaped in part by the biological processes going on In the soil. So a complex interplay of physical conditions, biology and chemistry.
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Hi Lesley, there is a lot of collaborative projects across the research world trying to understand these problem at a global scale. For example a large new experiment looking at the effect of drought across the world is being started by researchers at lots of different universities and institutes I lots of different countries.
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Hi Katherine, the video is there and works for me. Changing to a different internet browser or updating the browser may help to fix it.
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Hi Ian, good point. Reservoirs not explicitly mentioned in the course so thanks for sharing.
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Hi Susan, great point. One of the big issues with golf courses can be the amount of water they need - especially when in dry regions. For example in the south of Portugal there are many golf courses catering to the tourist demand but in a region with little rainfall. The grass can also suffer because of high nematode numbers in the soil which therefore...
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Hi Jeff, here is a link to distance learning programmes at Lancaster.
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/distance-learning/ -
Hi Juan, thanks for the response. As you say it is hard to know the best thing to do in a given situation. It is a balance of the potential benefits versus the potential negatives (which may be extremely unlikely). Personally I would want to look very hard for native species to do the job before I brought in a new species. Scientists have tried to look at what...
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There is always a risk with using non native species. Although there may not be native trees which would grow on the barren or eroded land, there would almost certainly be native plants adapted to these environments and as soils form native trees may well establish in the future.
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Hi Esther, you might be interested in this paper which showed increased nitrogen caused a decline in plant species diversity across uk grasslands.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/303/5665/1876.longMore recent research has built on this but whether there are national or global solutions is hard to say!
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Hi Juan, here is an article which talks about one particular nitrogen fixing tree.
Hope it is a useful introduction.http://conservationmagazine.org/2008/07/nitrogen-fixing-tree-paves-the-way-for-other-invaders/
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Thanks for sharing - great article.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Dave Hall
Sorry for 3 separate messages...computer issues!
My feeling with sea level change would be that rising levels would just wash away the soils (plus the normal life in soil would not survive total inundation with water). With decrease in sea levels the new land and sediment would be available for the start of soil formation.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Dave Hall
In other areas you can get differences. For example this article talks about scientists who got a plants to grow following 30000 years in permafrost so some quick rebound of life may be possible.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21498-plant-blooms-after-30000-years-in-permafrost/
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Dave Hall
Hi Dave, glad you enjoyed the course. Regarding ice ages and soils, in the UK glaciers in the last ice age caused major soil and bedrock erosion. After the retreat of the glaciers the left behind 'glacial till' (sand, gravel and clay) will form the parent material for new soil. So in the uk most soils only date from after the last ice age (approx 10000) years...
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Thanks for shedding light on the situation in Australia - although in each country there is a unique combination of issues, it seems there is often a lack of long-term sustainable planning.
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Great, happy to answer any further questions.
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Hi Anne, afraid I don't know any more about it really.
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Hi Michael and Honor, thanks for the questions. I went into quite a lot of detail about the experiment in responses to other people on the course, so if you want all the detail you can check them out (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/soils/2/comments/14488308 and https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/soils/2/comments/14488512).
But to answer quickly, the...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Horst Stunzner
Lancaster University also has a course on global food security - it is a different subject but may be interesting.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/food-security -
Hi Jenni,
Here are a couple of links about dung beetles in Australia:
http://www.dungbeetle.com.au/
http://www.csiro.au/en/Research/BF/Areas/Managing-the-impacts-of-invasive-species/Biological-control/Exotic-dung-beetle-to-tackle-Aussie-fliesAnd yes, wormers and other parasite control treatments can be toxic to dung beetles so the use of them needs to...
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Hi Jenni, interesting question. This is an opinion piece about the situation in the UK - not everyone will agree with it, but it can get a debate going!
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Hi Jolanda, it may be worth trying a different internet browser and see if it works then.
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Hi Judith, yes I think you are right in that the term swale is more often used in wetlands but you could probably describe the ones in the video as a swale as well.
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Hi Dessilava, great question. Different types of soil will differ in whether they are more dominated by bacteria or fungi, so as you say nutrient addition can be important, as can the type of plant community composition. The one word of warning I would say is that it is very hard to measure soil bacteria and fungi communities so scientists generally get a...
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Hi Anne, my understanding is that the mining would have been for fossilized diatom shells (http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/diatomite/).
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Probably too much for one person! But there is a new experiment starting which is going to investigate drought across the world with lots of sites in lot of countries run by lots of different people.
http://wp.natsci.colostate.edu/droughtnet/ -
That's a great government slogan! Thank you for sharing.
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Hi Nancy, thanks for the question. Does anyone have good advice?
It can be hard to know the best thing in any given situation, but I wonder if greater organic matter content in your soil would help.
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Hi Jeremy, thanks for the question. Nothing has been done yet to model the results at the whole landscape scale. It would be interesting to scale up the results, although it isn't my area of expertise. Obviously scaling up does introduce uncertainty so basing the data from 1 field experiment is not ideal - it would be good to combine results from several...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Judith Kinghorn
Hi Judith, I haven't come across the idea of using plastic sheeting to kill seeds. I assume the potential high temperatures or soil moisture mean the seeds either don't germinate or don't survive long afterwards. As for soil microbes, the site will already be disturbed if all root material has been removed so hard to know what sort of additional effect the...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Tina Meakin
Hi Tina, yes I am getting that at the moment. I don't know why as I am pretty sure the link to the article has worked in the past. Will pass it on.
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Hi Roger, this is actually an active area of research at Lancaster university. See this news article on the results from new research: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2016/solar-panels-study-reveals-impact-on-the-earth/
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I love that Bill Bryson book!
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Hi Nora, it might be worth trying a different internet browser or if possible a different computer. The videos for me don't have any noticeable echo.
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Thanks Jessica, yes that's my understanding as well.
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Hi Vaishalee, great questions. Unfortunately we don't know the answers for sure. As mycorrhizae are attached to roots researchers have studied the longevity of roots with mycorrhizae: "The median longevity of mycorrhizal roots at 0–20, 20–40 and 40–85 cm depth was 600, 764 and 1000 d, respectively"...
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As a very simple calculation you can assume the number of worms you found is representative of the whole field/garden and therefore multiply the number found to represent the larger area.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Rebecca Lees
Hi Rebecca, this wasn't an area I had thought about, however this information sheet on managing DDT on farms is an interesting start. I hadn't thought about some of these issues before.
http://ecan.govt.nz/advice/your-business/farming/Pages/managing-ddt-residues-sheep-beef-farms.aspx -
Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Keith Cornelius
Hi Keith. Apologies, I don't think the article is linked from the correct page. However if you want to explore this topic the article is here: https://www.bmbf.de/files/agriculture-03-00443.pdf
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Hi Keith, thanks for point this out. I think the video is meant to be for this bit: "Hunting for methane with Katey Walter Anthony, UAF 2010. University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Katey Walter Anthony takes us onto a frozen lake in Fairbanks, AK to demonstrate why methane gas has "exploded" onto the climate change scene."
However it is not there for me...
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Thanks for the comments - good to get input. One thing to point out is you could use these ditches in addition to using cover crops and particular plowing (where appropriate) to cause further reductions in losses to watercourses. Additionally the ditches are very cheap to do - whereas some approaches will cost a lot more.
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Hi Julia, I haven't come across this, although it wouldn't surprise me - has anyone got experience of this?
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Great discussion. I agree, growing the right crop in the right place is the first requirement and after that thinking about the most efficient watering strategy is the potential next step. Also the example in the video will only be suitable in certain contexts, either small scale, pot growing in greenhouses or similar.
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Who knows how different the planet would be without soil. Large animals, like us, certainly wouldn't survive!
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Hi Patrick, yes the type of parent material can have a big impact on soils. For example parent material can influence soil formation due to mineralogical composition and texture. There is more detail in the linked article:
https://www.britannica.com/science/soil#toc214846 -
Hi Carol, thanks for your comment. Interesting to hear about the potential effects of changes in rainfall.
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Hi John, the farmer can dig out the sediment and spread it back on their fields, which will also have the benefit of adding some of the nutrients back for the plants to use.
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Hi Andrea. I agree, environmental experiments are fascinating. In the UK we have a charity which supports long term ecological experiments. It also has a list of such experiments - one of them started in 1856!
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Linda McNab
I agree! I think we often only take action collectively when things are really bad.
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Hi, interesting comment. Some pollutants and pesticides may well have been trapped. However it will be at much lower concentration than originally applied. This may mean farmers are not too concerned about putting the soil back on the fields. However this is not my area of experience so I don't that much about it. Do any others know more about it?
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Hi Vanda. Compaction from farm machinery can certainly be a major issue. This is a quote from the University of Minnesota:
"Wheel traffic – This is without a doubt the major cause of soil compaction. With increasing farm size, the window of time in which to get these operations done in a timely manner is often limited. The weight of tractors has increased...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to shener ali
Hi Shener, thanks for the comment. You may be interested that in the next activity (3.4 More about the importance of soils) Carly and John talk about soil sealing, which is where soils get covered with tarmac and development and the associated risks.
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Hi Nell, the farmer can dig out the sediment and spread it back on their fields, which will also have the benefit of adding some of the nutrients back for the plants to use.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to cathy hill
Hi Cathy, thanks for pointing this out - I will investigate which article it should be referring to.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Natalie Keene
Glad you are enjoying the course! I hope you enjoy your Masters.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Cindy Eiritz
Hi Cindy, thanks for your comment. Humans often determine the conditions in which soils will either erode or grow - for example the type of farming, grazing, tillage etc will impact soil formation. So that is the human component. As you suggest, plants and soil organisms are the ones that will bring about the soil formation - so they are key!
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Oluremi Olu
Hi Oluremi, I'm afraid the tilling practices, choice of species, and length of time will all vary depending on the type, location and severity of contamination. For example phytoremediation will take longer if contamination levels are very high or if the chosen plants are slow growing. The United Nations Environment Programme has an introductory guide to...
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Hi Shane,
As you say having a solid baseline is key really. I haven't measured respiration at night but it is done in some experiments, especially if you want accurate estimate of respiration over time.There will certainly be lost of other ecological factors which influence responses to drought. One interesting one is how different plant or soil...
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Hi Francisca, Yes dung beetles are found on every continent except Antarctica! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Dung_beetle)
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Hi Natalie, yes soil microbes rely on soil moisture. Although some species will be able to cope better with water and temperature stress than others.
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Hi Philip, there are definitely interesting links between antibiotic use in cattle and antibiotic-resistance in soil bacteria. There is an interesting article discussing new research here: http://www.nature.com/news/manure-fertilizer-increases-antibiotic-resistance-1.16081
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Hi Julia, interesting question. I had a look at the research article for the central park study (link below). They only sampled soil to 5cm in depth so really focused on the microbial community at the soil surface. Generally most of the microbial biomass will be near the surface as that is where most of the plant roots area (65% in top 25cm in one study)....
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Hi Gillian. Because of the high organic matter content, compost is very good at holding water and will obviously shade the soil below. It wouldn't surprise me if gardeners have to add compost to be able to grow successfully in those conditions.
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Hi Greg, great question. Soil moisture definitely can have a large effect on soil microbes. Fungi are thought to generally able to cope with water stress better than bacteria - so changes in soil microbial community composition could change how resistant or resilience soil communities are to water stress....
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Sorry that turned into a long reply. Hopefully it helps explain. Ultimately you have to make decisions between different experimental designs of which there is never a 'perfect' one - they will all have some weakness somewhere! The limitations you point out have to be considered when explaining the results from the experiment in the video.
As you suggest...
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Hi Shane, thanks for the comments and questions.
1) In similar experiments people can use plastic sheeting in trenches to stop lateral flow of water. Unfortunately this trenching can trap water and cause pooling of water both inside and outside the plot. Trenching also severs all plant roots. To avoid this, we chose not to trench which allows lateral flow...
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I'm afraid I have no idea! I will try to ask someone who may know....does anyone have any ideas?
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Depending on what the grey water is from may determine the impact. For example the use of some soaps could potentially have an effect. So in the USA there is this advice:
"Gray water, is reusable wastewater from residential, commercial and industrial bathroom sinks, bath tub shower drains, and clothes washing equipment drains. Gray water is reused onsite,... -
Hi Iman, the video is describing how to water plants to keep them at optimum soil moisture. So if the optimum is at well-drained capacity and that is when soil and moisture weigh 600g, then if the pot only weighs 550g you need to add 50g of water to bring it back to well-drained capacity and optimum for that plant species.
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As far as I know Lorna, it does have to be red cabbage.
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Hi Nigel, yes humus is a really key part of soil. It can be important for nutrients for plant growth and increases soil water holding capacity.(https://www.britannica.com/science/humus-soil-component).
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Hi Karen - that's a great question. Sadly I'm not sure we know enough to be able to know exactly which mechanisms are key for bringing about high diversity of soil microbes. But imported plants could definitely have a role, especially if they came with lots of imported soil - the authors suggest the large number of different soil types in the park could have a...
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Hi Sian, soil horizons can be very variable so the layers may not be very distinct - or for you they may be deeper down.
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Hi Paul, interesting question. Overall we know very little about soil microorganisms and this study in central park was very intensive with lots of samples. This means that we really don't know if the same amount of diversity would be found around NY but outside Central Park. The authors suggest the high diversity in central park may be due to the big range of...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Ed Rubin
Hi Ed. Great question. Arbuscular mycorrhizae, Ectomycorrhizae and Ericoid mycorrhizae can all transfer nutrients or other elements/compounds from plant to plant. For example phosphorus can be transferred through Arbuscular mycorrhizae and Ectomycorrhizae. However Arbuscular mycorrhizae can also transfer plant hormones and signalling molecules. How common the...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Brian Culross
You might be right Brian, however could you not argue that colonisers are likely to be growing in extreme environments given no other plants have previously managed to grow?! I agree this is becoming an in depth discussion!
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I think she meant to say stage and not stadium. Happy to be corrected if the word stadium is used for describing plant growth but I am not aware of it either!
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Yes the Hadesarchaea are incredible. Carbon monoxide is a common gas in the hydrothermal environments where they are found so they will probably have a ready supply. Given the extreme environment in which they are found I don't think they have been cultured, but their genomes reveal how different their metabolism is to other organisms.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Brian Culross
Good work on tackling the article! I agree that highly efficient root system would be a good hypothesis for potentially reduced role of myccorhizae. Having looked at the article again I would add plants growing in stressful environments may more likely to be NM. Brundrett suggests this includes: in water (hydophytes), on other plants (epiphytes), in cold...
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Really great question Ariane. Although all are important I wonder if the balance may vary from soil to soil. Does anyone have examples where one is really important?
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Hi Michael, whether it is good or bad will depend on other processes in the ecosystem. For example if we want increased carbon storage, then increased respiration suggests more carbon may be lost as CO2(which may imply less carbon storage). However it could also be that these systems are also photosynthesizing more, so potentially no change in soil carbon...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Brian Culross
Hi Brian, plants which are non-mycorrhizal are spread across a wide range of plant families. As the relationship with myccorhizal fungi is important for plants to get nutrients, some of the plant families have other strategies such as parasitism, carnivory, or cluster roots.
As you suggest we can't always be sure a species doesn't have the symbiosis with...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Caroline Grace
Hi Catherine, yes they do. The British Geological Survey (BGS) have an interesting document on the economic cost of soil shrinking and swelling, where it is more of an issue in clay-rich soils. (https://www.bgs.ac.uk/downloads/start.cfm?id=240)
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Interesting stuff - the bullfrog example shows how one species response to climate then impacts lots of other species
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Hi Buhiran, I am afraid this course is unable to answer every practical question people will have. The course provides introductory material across a wide range of topics related to soil, and then we can hopefully point people to additional resources which have the necessary information and advice.
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We cover some aspects of soil erosion in week three, so hopefully those resources will provide some introductory material for you.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Buhiran MSc
Apologies, we do not have space in this course to cover all the practical areas of soil science which we otherwise would. There are lots of resources online for contaminated soil management. For example this report on land remediation which covers soils (http://www.sepa.org.uk/media/28317/land-remediation-and-waste-management-guidelines.pdf)
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to David Hickey
Hi David - that's a big question! Some recent research on soil erosion is highlighted in week three so look out for that.
Although not directly related to soil management, for me one of the exciting advances is the role of soils as a source of new antibiotics...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Tony Rogers
Hi Tony, afraid I don't know and this is not my area of expertise! Do other people have any ideas?
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Erin H
Hi Erin, yes it could be that you have very deep soil horizons. As you say the garden surface soil will probably be different, potentially also due to adding compost.
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Hi Kate. Just to say, in week three we look at some of the issues surrounding soil security and erosion (e.g. activities 3.3 and 3.5). Hopefully they will be of interest to you.
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Thanks for that Charles - very interesting. 3.5MT makes for a busy year!
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Great questions. As Charles has mentioned they have widespread effects on ecosystems. This is a quote from a review of scientific papers on the effect dung beetles (the Scarabaeinae dung beetles):
"Through manipulating feces during the feeding process, dung beetles instigate a series of ecosystem functions ranging from secondary seed dispersal to nutrient...
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Silica is one of the main components which makes up sand.
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Hi Jessica.
Great question and it is the subject of a lot of research. For example research in Switzerland showed a wide range of species moved uphill to cooler climates. However birds and butterflies moved much more than plants. (http://phys.org/news/2014-01-climate-animals.html).Do other people have examples of differences between species in response...
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Hi, thanks for your comment. It's always great to get perspectives from around the world.
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to tayyba nawaz
Hi, there are few different ways of measuring the proportion of clay and sand. Some are more straightforward and use settle in water (http://soilquality.org.au/factsheets/soil-texture-measuring-in-the-lab) while others use lasers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_diffraction_analysis). This course includes a simple version which can be done in the field...
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Andrew Cole (Mentor) replied to Caroline Grace
Hi Caroline, yes under drought conditions the water content in soil will be lower (so less blue in this video). This means soil pores will have less water which can make it harder for soil microbes (such as bacteria or fungi) to survive.
