Terrestrial Geo-Biosphere Interactions in a Changing World: Concepts, Challenges, and Opportunities

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and other resources we use, have resulted from interactions between the Earth’s geosphere and biosphere. Understanding these interactions is thus essential for human wellbeing, which is endangered by anthropogenically induced climate and land-use change. While contemporary anthropogenic pressures are unprecedented, the processes and natural laws governing the Earth System remain universal. Interactions between the geosphere (rocks, soils, water, atmosphere and the Earth’s surface) and the biosphere (microorganisms, fungi, plants, and animals) determine how the Earth System responds to change. Past research has largely considered geosphere and biosphere responses to Earth-System change separately. The new cluster of excellence TERRA at the Univesity of Tübingen develops an integrated understanding of how geo-biosphere interactions in terrestrial systems induce and respond to environmental changes, using evidence from both the geological past and the present to improve projections of future global change impacts and assess the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation strategies. Understanding feedbacks between diversity and stability in the geosphere and the biosphere lies at the heart of TERRA. In particular, we hypothesize that diversity in the geosphere stabilizes the biosphere, and that vice versa biodiversity is key to stabilizing the geosphere.

TERRA represents an interdisciplinary Earth-System-Science approach. We will integrate observational, experimental, and modeling approaches spanning different periods of Earth history, incorporating the full spectrum of geological and biological sciences. We will analyze past geo-biosphere interactions preserved in geological records to elucidate how the Earth System responded to conditions that have not yet been encountered in historical times but may be encountered in the future. A mechanistic understanding of processes will be achieved by studying contemporary geo-biosphere interactions on different spatial scales. The newly established Diversitorium will facilitate field and laboratory experiments where the diversity of one sphere is selectively manipulated to study effects on the other sphere. Synthesis across spatio-temporal scales will be provided by developing and advancing integrative models merging machine learning and process-based approaches. These models will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation measures to cope with global change.