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Our Changing Planet and Its Microbiome

Our Changing Planet and Its Microbiome. David M. Karl Council on Foreign Relations Roundtable 9 June 2014  Washington, D.C. OUTLINE. E volution of life and the human imprint Honor thy microbe and its genome! The changing planet – IPCC A sustainable future?.

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Our Changing Planet and Its Microbiome

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  1. Our Changing Planet and Its Microbiome David M. Karl Council on Foreign Relations Roundtable 9 June 2014  Washington, D.C.

  2. OUTLINE • Evolution of life and the human imprint • Honor thy microbe and its genome! • The changing planet – IPCC • A sustainable future?

  3. “Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future” Tellus (1957) IGY Brochure (1957)

  4. THE KEELING CURVE

  5. INTRODUCTION TO SEA MICROBES

  6. Microbes have a long history on Earth, especially compared to man

  7. DIVERSITY • Phylogenetic • Metabolic • Habitat/Niche Space TIME is a critical variable for all three properties

  8. Control production and consumption of organic matter/oxygen, and poise pH/redox Production and consumption of “greenhouse” gases (CO2, CH4, N2O) Control N availability: N2 fixation, nitrification and denitrification Contain enormous genomic potential that sustains metabolic flexibility Microbes make things happen! MARINE MICROORGANISMS

  9. THE SECOND “GOLDEN AGE” OF MICROBIOLOGY: THE –OMICS ERA

  10. J.C. Venter et al. (2004)“Environmental shotgun sequencing of the Sargasso Sea”Science 304: 66-74 • Sargasso Sea (200 l), shotgun sequencing approach • Few thousand new species • More than 1,000,000 new protein-coding genes (10x the total # discovered to date) • Hundreds of new photoreceptors that may capture energy from sunlight • Surface seawater only!

  11. Science, society and sustainability are inextricably linked! The “Larger Context”

  12. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) • Created in 1988 – just 26 years ago • World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) • Mission: “To provide governments of the world with a clear scientific view of the world’s climate”

  13. IPCC Assessment Reports • AR-1 (1990): Baseline for state of the planet • AR-4 (2007): • AR-5 (2013-2014) “Warming in the climate system is unequivocal” “The ocean is changing”

  14. Assessment Findings are classified using relative terms and quantitative probability statements:

  15. IPCC AR5-WGII-Chapter 6

  16. IPCC AR5-WGII-Chapter 6

  17. CHANGING OCEAN ECOSYSTEMS • Warming and enhanced stratification: circulation, productivity • Acidification and loss of oxygen: impacts metabolism and growth • Biodiversity losses and invasions: changing distribution, abundances and reproduction patterns • Coastal erosion and pollution: eutrophication, dead zones

  18. “In the absence of time-series data sets, contemporary field observations are hidden in the ‘invisible present’” John Magnuson 1990 Bioscience 40: 495 A “call to arms” for ocean time-series

  19. est. 1984 JGOFS • Global and transdisciplinary • C-N-P cycles • Process studies, time-series, data assimilation and modeling • Hypothesis generation and testing • Education and training

  20. established October 1988

  21. Air-sea carbon cycle processes Acidification

  22. ACID, CO2 AND MICROBES More observations and experiments are needed

  23. WHAT IS AT STAKE? • Conceptual understanding of the sea, Earth’s largest biome • Global productivity and other ecosystem services • Ocean carbon sequestration and climate • Planetary habitability and human survival quite a bit!

  24. NOT EVEN THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG! T. Newberger The 2nd Golden Age of Microbiology • Microbial oceanography: new opportunities • New microbes, novel physiology/biochemistry • New paradigms regarding energy flow in the sea …living in the invisible present

  25. “Ocean science can no longer be viewed as an esoteric, ‘offshore’ discipline. It is mainland and mainstream. The health and bounty of our oceans are issues of planetary survival.” NSF Director Rita Colwell at NRC Symposium on Fifty Years of Ocean Discovery 30 October 1998

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