Project overview

To assess the project hypotheses, I have delineated a research plan with three main objectives:

• · Objective 1: quantifying the importance of drought history in affecting biogeochemical processes controlled by soil microorganisms in response to extreme drought events, targeting realistic climate change scenarios.
• · Objective 2: assessing legacies in microbial communities and soil properties of soils with different drought history during extreme drought events, and the potential importance for ecological memory formation.
• · Objective 3: investigating soil microbial community dynamics as mechanisms of ecological memory.

These objectives will be achieved via interlinked Work Packages (WPs; Fig. 4), with different aims:

Aim I: Assessing ecological memory of extreme events (WP-I).

Aim II: Assessing the role of press and pulse drought in the emergence of ecological memory (WP-II).

Aim III: Exploring links between genomic features, soil properties and biogeochemical processes in soil microbial communities displaying ecological memory formation (WP-III).

Aim IV: Identify features of soil microbial community dynamics hindering ecological memory (WP-IV).