Climate, Energy and Carbon in Ancient Earth Systems

CERES will integrate analytical innovation, biogeochemistry in modern contexts, and geological archives to holistically evaluate how
climate change affects peatland carbon cycling across multiple timescales. Greenhouse gases shaped Earth history, impacting both
climate and ecosystems; ongoing anthropogenic emissions are doing the same. These include impacts on the microbially mediated
processes that govern the chemical state of our planet and act as climate feedbacks. Soil microorganisms, for example, account for
the largest natural methane flux, and yet these processes remain poorly understood, mediated by multiple environmental factors.
Insight can be derived from geological archives that document the timescale-dependent responses of biogeochemical systems to
environmental perturbations. Such studies on peat and lignites provide tantalising insights into climate-driven disruption of the
carbon cycle, but the underlying mechanisms remain unresolved. This critical knowledge gap arises from our inability to determine
the isotopic signatures of the most diagnostic biomarkers. Therefore, we will:
1) Develop new instrumentation for the isotopic determination of large bacterial and archaeal biomolecules. This is a transformative
expansion of our biomarker toolkit as our analytical window expands from low to highly diagnostic compounds.
2) Apply these new methods to modern peatlands, examining biomarker isotopic compositions in the field as well as in experiments
in response to manipulation of pH, temperature and substrate.
3) Apply our new biomarker methods and understanding to the geological past. Working across decadal to multi-million year
timescales, we will unlock the mechanistic controls underlying ancient reorganisations of wetland carbon cycling.
Through these WPs, CERES will probe how microbial metabolism, and hence biogeochemical cycles, operate(d) on the Earth today,
through its history, and in response to rapid global warming.