9:00 am - 10:00 am
Event details: A graduate exam seminar is a presentation of the student’s final research project for their degree.
This is an ALES MSc Final Exam Seminar by Angelica Aguirre Monroy. This seminar is open to the general public to attend.
Zoom meeting:
https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/j/95618275349?pwd=MjdCbDFsTG1ERk9aL2VDdzBiQnpOdz09
Thesis Topic:
Impact of Farming Practices on Soil Bacterial Community Composition, Diversity, and Interactions in The Main Agricultural Regions of Alberta.
MSc with Dr. M. Derek MacKenzie and Dr. Brian Lanoil
Seminar Abstract:
The Soil Quality Monitoring Program was conducted in Alberta from 1997 to 2007 to characterize soil quality from benchmark sites across the province considering only soil physico-chemical attributes. Given that agricultural practices could affect the soil environment and microbial communities are sensitive to environmental changes, I revisited the benchmark sites and evaluated bacterial communities from soils undergoing different agricultural practices (i.e., tillage intensity, crop type, herbicide use, and fertilization method). I assessed the effect of agricultural practices on soil bacterial community composition, heterogeneity, diversity, and co-occurrence via high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA marker gene. The composition of soil bacterial communities was insensitive to agricultural practices; instead, pH and ecoregion were the main predictors of the community composition among all parameters evaluated. Co-occurrence network analyses revealed that the complexity and behavior of interactions among the members of the soil bacterial community were altered by different agricultural practices.
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