Researchers from the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a user facility of the Department of Energy at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, team up with collaborators to collect soil cores from various ecosystems , including urban, agricultural, grassland, forest and desert ecosystems. North America.
Through the 1000 Soil Research Pilot Project, EMSL is at the forefront of developing a first-of-its-kind database of molecular-level data from subterranean ecosystems.
Community collaboration is essential
So far, 20 cores have been sent to EMSL by academic institutions and federal partners such as Washington State University (WSU) in Vancouver and the National Ecological Observatory Network, said Emily Graham, Earth scientist and head of the integrated research platform on biogeochemical transformations at EMSL.
Another 60 cores are expected to be collected over the next few months, and the project is open to other researchers to join the effort