2012 Summer Soil Institute

The 2012 Summer Soil Institute hosted at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University is a 2 week intensive soil course designed for students to gain exposure to perspectives from world-renowned faculty to address critical questions related to soil chemistry and microbial ecology using current analytical techniques, experimental approaches, and instructional models.

SSI students spent the week 2 Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon sessions learning about qPCR and the Microplate Enzyme Assay Using Fluorescence-Based MUB & MUC-Linked Substrates.

For more information regarding Techniques, Topics, and Instructors for the 2012 Summer Soil Institute, please visit: http://soilinstitute.nrel.colostate.edu/index.html

The Art of Harvesting Knowledge:

During the 2nd International Enzymes in the Environment Workshop: Integrating Enzymes and Microbial Physiology into Biogeochemical Models, a ‘graphic facilitator’ was utilized to help us visually document  content presented during the talks as well as dialogue generated from the topic discussions during the World Café small round- table groups. This graphic facilitation was a great experience for all the participants and added value to the sharing and  integration of knowledge among workshop participants. 


Some of the graphic representations from the workshop are presented below:

Tuesday 05/15/2012 (Day 1):

Keynote Speaker: Josh Schimel

Wednesday 05/16/2012 Day 2:

Speaker Session 1A: New Paradigms

Speaker Session 1B: Current Applications

Working Group Session 1A: Priming

Working Group Session 1B: The Role of Nitrogen

End of Day 2: Reflections

Thursday 05/17/2012 Day 3:

Speaker Session 2: Challenges and Knowledge Gaps

Working Group Session 2A: Trade Offs

Working Group Session 2B: Scale

Working Group Session 2B: Defining Useful Data

Invitation to submit to a special issue in Biogeochemistry: Incorporating Enzymes and Microbial Physiology into Biogeochemical Models

The Enzymes in the Environment RCN has selected Biogeochemistry as the outlet for the special issue related to the workshop, and the chief editor has enthusiastically approved our proposal.  We anticipate 2-4 perspective/review papers to anchor the issue, and hope for several data and modeling submissions as well. We want you to submit your best work to what will be a high-profile, highly cited issue.  

Why submit to this special issue?

-Higher visibility (papers appearing in special issues get many more views and citations)

-We will help to coordinate the papers so that they complement each other, and cite each other.  When your paper is published, it may already have several citations.

-Rapid review:  We will enlist other contributors to help review your paper rapidly.  Your paper will be published online as soon as it is accepted, so it will not be held up by other papers in the issue.

We have established a tentative deadline of October 15^th, 2012.  The issue will be open to contributions from non-workshop participants. 

RCN workshop after Day 3 - unwinding at the end of a productive day with a tour of Fort Collins own New Belgium Brewery and a nice dinner at Choice City!

Working group breakout session titled Defining Useful Data led by Steve Del Grosso and Gwenaelle Lashermes. Start-off statement by Steve: Modelers want data that will improve the model fit! Useful data for models is dependent on the purpose of the model. Ecosystem scale models will likely not need the same parameters that micro-site lignin decomposition models will need. Enzyme activity Vmax and Km (enzyme kinetics) data is likely to be much more important for small scale models. Furthermore, one challenge with this is that there are plenty of Vmax values, but Km values are not as common due to method / lab logistics complications.

Visual summary of morning session.

The "World Cafe" is a success!

 For our breakout group discussions, we adopted the World Cafe format.  In brief, all participants split into tables of 4-5 people and discuss the same topic for 20 minutes, then we scramble the groups and continue the discussion for another 20 minutes.  We then have a full group discussion to synthesize the various discussions. The advantages of this technique are that everyone gets to participate, and as a result, we are able to address the topic with the collective genius in the room. 

Yesterday, we had discussed two topics:  1.  How to incorporate 'priming' into models and 2.  The role of N in decomposition models.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy the format, and the biggest challenge was keeping things on schedule because the conversations were going so well.  So, for today's meeting, we've adjusted the schedule a bit to give more time for the World Cafe discussions.