Viability and metabolic assays are commonly used as proxies to assess the overall
metabolism of microorganisms. The variety of these assays combined with little information …

Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is a critical regulator of soil organic matter dynamics
and terrestrial carbon fluxes, with strong implications for soil biogeochemistry models. While …

Featured Application Energy rules life. All living systems keep themselves alive by balancing
the energy input and output by universal thermodynamic principles. Soils are not an …

Root hairs proliferation and warming strongly influence exudate release, enzyme activities
and microbial substrate utilization. However, how the presence of root hairs regulates those …

Thermogravimetry is a technique measuring mass change during programmed heating. In
soil analysis, it is used for determination of content of volatile fractions, thermally labile and …

Spatial heterogeneity is a pervasive feature of soils, affecting the distribution of carbon
sources as well as their microbial consumers. Heterogeneous addition of substrates typically …

Root growth requires substantial amounts of energy and thus carbohydrates. The energy
costs of root growth are particularly high in both dry and compacted soil, due to high soil …

Microbial substrate use efficiency is an important property in process-based soil organic
matter models, but is often assumed to be constant in mechanistic models. However …

Catalytic activity of microbial communities maintains the services and functions of soils.
Microbial communities require energy and carbon for microbial growth, which they obtain by …

Long-term contrasts in agricultural management can shift soil resource availability with
potential consequences to microbial carbon (C) use efficiency (CUE) and the fate of C in …