The remarkable complexity of soil and its importance to a wide range of ecosystem services
presents major challenges to the modeling of soil processes. Although major progress in soil …

A significant proportion of the Earth's surface is desert or in the process of desertification.
The extreme environmental conditions that characterize these areas result in a surface that …

Numerous diverse microorganisms reside in the cold desert soils of continental Antarctica,
though we lack a holistic understanding of the metabolic processes that sustain them. Here …

Cultivation-independent surveys have shown that the desert soils of Antarctica harbour
surprisingly rich microbial communities,,. Given that phototroph abundance varies across …

Water is vital for many biological processes and is essential for all living organisms.
However, numerous macroorganisms and microorganisms have adapted to survive in …

Antarctic biodiversity is much more extensive, ecologically diverse and biogeographically
structured than previously thought. Understanding of how this diversity is distributed in …

Understanding the structure, functions, activities and dynamics of microbial communities in
natural environments is one of the grand challenges of 21st century science. To address this …

Dispersal is a critical yet poorly understood factor underlying macroecological patterns in
microbial communities. Airborne microbial transport is assumed to occupy a central role in …

Arid ecosystems cover∼ 40% of the Earth's terrestrial surface and store a high proportion of
the global nitrogen (N) pool. They are low-productivity, low-biomass, and polyextreme …

Glacier forefields provide a unique chronosequence to assess microbial or plant
colonization and ecological succession on previously uncolonized substrates. Patterns of …