[conteúdo apenas disponível em inglês]
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts increasing air temperatures and decreasing soil moisture content, the soils being among the most affected components of terrestrial ecosystems, especially in anthropogenic-contaminated areas. Soil microorganisms are key players in terrestrial ecosystem functions and services, quickly responding to environmental stresses. MICROCLIM aims to assess how microbial populations of agricultural soils affected by the contamination derived from the Estarreja Chemical Complex may be affected under the current global warming perspective, by using changes at structural and functional level. The specific objectives are: 1) assessing structural and functional changes in microbial populations of contaminated agricultural soils induced by single climate factors (soil moisture content and air temperature and their relation to changes in soil chemical and physicochemical parameters, and 2) assessing structural and functional changes in microbial populations of contaminated agricultural soils under different climate change scenarios, simulated by climate factors combinations (soil moisture content and air temperature), and their relation to changes in soil chemical and physicochemical parameters. Climate factors ranges will be established based on the emission scenarios predicted by the IPCC by 2100. The project will rely on changes in soil microbial populations at structural (bacterial community phylogenetic composition) and functional (microbial metabolic activity) level and their relation to key soil parameters (pH, organic matter, metal(loi) availability). MICROCLIM will improve the capacity to predict the consequences of global warming in soil microbiota from anthropogenic-contaminated soils, which, in turn, will enable a better preservation and sustainability of soil ecosystem functions and services.