"US (AZ): "Cracking the code of soil genesis: How rocks become life"
Now comes Dragos Zaharescu who established, at the University of Arizona's Biosphere 2, a laboratory designed to determine how rocks become soil which then is capable of becoming a prolific supporter of plant life. With funding from the National Science Foundation, and in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team from Soil, Water & Environmental Science (SWES) and Biosphere 2, the Rockubator was born. As the name suggests, it is an incubator for rocks which are subjected to various treatments with the final outcome being their transformation to soil. The objective of this study is to learn how plants (with the assistance of bacteria and fungi) transform rocky terrains into a living ecosystem.
Zaharescu is an interdisciplinary and exuberant scientist. He describes his research as sitting "at the interface between biology, ecology, geochemistry and climate science". When asked, he shares his approach to research as relying on multiple disciplines but focusing on one vision: "I use observational and lab based approaches, from large-scale surveys to setting mezocosm-scale life support systems. I continuously improve and cross-pollinate methods and concepts from different fields including geochemistry, microbiology, anatomy, plant and animal physiological ecology, landscape ecology, limnology, climate science, and material sciences".
For more information:
University of Arizona
Controlled Environment Agriculture Center
1951 E. Roger Road
Tucson, AZ 85719
Phone: 520-626-9566
ceac.arizona.edu
