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Kelly Ramirez (PhDEbio’12) on how understanding microbial ecology can help solve global problems of hunger, land degradation and climate change.

When we think about biodiversity, many of us imagine charismatic animals like polar bears or vibrant ecosystems like the rainforest. But a fundamental type of biodiversity is far less visible —the microbes, small invertebrates and other creatures that inhabit the soil. Places we might not imagine as biodiversity hotspots, like New York City’s Central Park, are home to a vast foodweb of thousands of organisms, many of which support the cycling of elements that makes this earth habitable.

CU Boulder alumna Kelly Ramirez, soil microbial ecologist at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, is trying to learn more about the role of these underappreciated ecosystems. Outside her research, she’s also involved with the increasing the visibility of women scientists, through her organization, 500 Women Scientists.

How do you define soil biodiversity?
Soil biodiversity is all the microbes, earthworms, even moles that contribute to creating an ecosystem that cycles nutrients, supports plant life, food, water — pretty much all the things terrestrial ecosystems rely on.

Why is soil biodiversity important?
Fundamentally, it’s important to help plants grow. We wouldn't have a green earth without brown soil. Soil stores carbon, cycles water, cycles nutrients. Soil is included in all the ecosystem services that are necessary for humans to be on Earth.

We wouldn't ask that same question of why are plants important. It’s just not as obvious, because we can’t see soil organisms functioning, whereas we can see a tree growing, we can see corn growing and then it produces food.

What sparked your interest in soil biodiversity?
When I was doing my bachelor’s degree, I kept taking microbiology and virology classes and I was convinced that I was gonna go to medical school. My virology class had a teacher who had one of those old slide projectors and it was just story time for an hour and a half twice a week.

Then I took an ecology class and the concepts of ecology were also really cool, and they had a whole different framework. In ecology, especially when you think about microbes, there's this whole frontier of so many questions.

So I looked for graduate programs that had microbial ecology. I found Noah Fierer [at CU Boulder] and he was studying microbial ecology in the soil. I was really inspired and motivated by his work and he invited me to his lab.

I was really interested to study microbes and what they do in any ecosystem. You can ask very similar questions whether you’re in the soil or studying microbes on leaves, caterpillar guts, or water. As I finished my PhD I was like, Ok, we have all this data about microbes, but what can we actually do with it? It doesn't help save the environment, combat climate change, or restore ecosystems if we just have a list of microbial species.

So, I started a postdoc with Diana Wall at Colorado State in 2012 to bring this really important research that people were doing with soil organisms into the management and policy world. There's conservation work for plants and animals, but that's not a thing in the microbial world. We still have so many questions. How do you restore a soil to have a microbial community that you want? Well, we don't even know what the community would look like.

You were the executive director of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative between 2012 and 2014. What did you do there?
It was really fun. The goal was to link researchers and research across soil biodiversity. I created a network of people working on microbes, on earthworms, on tardigrades [a group of eight-legged microscopic animals] — on anything to do with soil biodiversity. We try to promote and amplify their research. We would go to conferences directed at policymakers, bringing in these stories of soil biodiversity to say ‘Hey, there are these organisms out there that have been largely forgotten in biodiversity estimates in the world.’

One way we highlighted those organisms that was with a research project. We went to Central Park and we collected soil samples to look at what the biodiversity was. There’s like 150,000 types of bacteria in the soil, and 70,000 types of fungi, earthworms and tardigrades. That was interesting research, but it also was a great talking piece. I can talk to anyone about Central Park. And then the number of organisms that occur in the soil just in Central Park is really astounding.

The other part was getting people together to talk about the steps that we have to take to translate research so it actually can be used in policy.

Are you still involved with the organization?
Yes. We're working on a project together to push the discussion about the topics that soil biodiversity needs to be more present in for these global agendas, like the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

What questions are you trying to answer in your research?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the role the microbes have in helping plant establishment, success and productivity. Just like the human microbiome, it’s thought that there is an important core microbiome for plant communities. But my work is showing that it’s really variable based on the plant species.

We've been looking at range expansion. When an ecosystem gets warmer or drier and plants move there or leave, do they bring along their microbes? Or do they find new microbes?

Another area of research that I’m interested in is carbon cycling in the soil. We know that microbes and soil biodiversity are intimately connected to the cycling and storage of carbon in the soil, but how does that change across different land uses? As land is used more and more for agriculture, can they store as much carbon in the soil? And are there ways to help restore the biodiversity in the soil to increase carbon storage? These are tricky questions because it’s not like we're just going to add more of this one type of this bacteria and that still solve everything. It’s a lot more complex than that.

That does sound complicated. What keeps you motivated to do this research?
The questions in ecology are one thing, but the questions of solving global hunger or climate change are really serious, so if my research can even a little bit inform on that, that would be really great. What motivates me is balancing my research questions with important global sustainability questions, and figuring out ways that my research can fit into those questions.

This year I went to the Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Egypt, COP14. I presented about soil biodiversity, but I also just got to listen to people from all over the world talk about the challenges that their countries face with land degradation and agriculture and the solutions that they're applying. It's really inspiring for me so sit in on those.

What’s your favorite soil organism?
I love bacteria, but the most cuddly organism is the tardigrade. Everyone loves it. We always use it in photos to convince people that soil has cuddly organisms.

What have you been working on recently with 500 women scientists?
We now have over 10,000 women who have signed up on our Request a Scientist database. There’s this idea that there aren’t any good women in this field. But there are a lot of great women scientists, it’s just that they're not usually asked to do things. We have some funding to rebuild that database so that we can have more than the 10,000 women that we have in there right now.

The other thing we're working on that I'm really excited about is that we are developing a fellowship for women of color leading in STEM.

And then we're still building up our international network of women scientists with our local chapters that we call pods. We have over 300 pods around the world. We also amplify their work, because a lot of them are doing awesome work in their communities.

Condensed and edited by Ula Chrobak