Responsibilities and Interests:

Research in the Bruns lab aims to gain understanding of soil microbial responses to anthropogenic disturbance and of microbes’ roles in mitigating disturbance effects.

Humans are constantly altering the face of the Earth—through forest clearing, urban development, agricultural cropping, strip mining. When soils are subjected to drastic disturbances, their complex biological networks are also disrupted. Well-established interactions among roots, fungi, other microflora, and micro- and macrofauna are all destroyed once vegetation is removed and soil is upturned, buried, or eroded away. Humans have little understanding of the ecosystem services performed by these underground biological networks or the impacts their losses may have (had) on local, regional, and global biogeochemical cycles.

We are studying nitrogen transformations in agricultural soils; beneficial microbe-mineral-plant interactions in reclaimed soils; and multi-functional biological crusts on arable soils. We combine molecular, microbiological, biochemical, microscopic, and mineralogical techniques to explore microbe-mineral-plant interactions.

Appointment:

• 30% Teaching
• 70% Research

Courses Taught:

• Soil Ecology (Soils 412W, 3 cr, every fall, undergraduate)
• Environmental Soil Microbiology (Soils 512, 3 cr, spring of even years)

Links:

• Biogeochemistry Dual-Title Graduate Degree Program
  
• Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology
• Soil Microbiology Short Course at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
• A Legacy in the Soil – Follow the story of a young woman who returns to her family’s homestead to help clean up soils contaminated by acidic mine drainage.
• Allegheny Branch of the American Society for Microbiology (ABASM)