Microbial oxidation of organic carbon in coupling with the reduction of Fe, S, nitrate, and oxygen is a major process controlling soil organic carbon metabolism and CO2 flux in ecosystems. Microbial metabolism of organic carbon fundamentally occurs at the pore scale, while CO2 flux is often observed at the column and ecosystem scales. The large difference in observation scales posts a significant challenge to apply processes-based models that are often developed from pore-scale mechanisms to interpret ecosystem behaviors, which are often described using empirical models. This presentation will discuss our recent results of pore-scale measurements and modeling of organic carbon oxidation in soils with heterogeneous structures, the challenges in scaling pore-scale results to macroscopic scales using a micromodel system of redox interactions between biological organic reductant FMNH2 and hematite, and an effective multiscale approach that we recently developed to scale pore-scale results for ecosystem applications.

Multiscale investigation of microbial oxidation of soil organic carbon and effective integration of pore-scale mechanisms into macroscopic models

255th National Meeting (2018)

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