Dr. Xu received the NSF CAREER award!

This award comes with a $641K, 5-year grant to support a research project in which the EMAIL lab will develop a first-ever microbial data system to support the development of the CLM-Microbe model, a microbial-explicit model that has been developed in the EMAIL lab over the past eight years. This award positions the leadership role of the EMAIL lab in developing the microbial models within the Earth System Model to better understand the microbial roles in climate change.

The proposed tasks are as below:
(A) develop a microbial data system focusing on soil carbon cycling and CH4 processes;
(B) improve an extant land surface model (CLM-Microbe) embedded in the Community Earth System Model to explicitly represent microbial physiology and community structure for CO2 and CH4 processes and to further parameterize and validate the model at a site-level;
(C) apply the improved model to quantify microbial roles in CO2 and CH4 fluxes at various spatial and temporal scales;
(D) develop a hierarchical mentoring system to recruit students and provide them with training to successfully merge mathematics and ecology through research activities on data-model integration.

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2145130&HistoricalAwards=false