Dr. Andreas Heinemeyer

        Background
        I obtained a German Diploma at the University of Göttingen (Prof. Runge) in 1998 and after a move to the British Isles completed my Ph.D. at the University of York (Prof. Fitter) in 2002. Whereas the former investigated the influence of environmental impacts on the eastern distribution boundary of Digitalis purpurea L., the latter became more soil-focused, investigating impacts of temperature and light on carbon partitioning in the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis. During this study I became increasingly concerned with soil carbon budgets and fluxes and their responses to environmental change. I've organised the York "Techniques in AM research" course during 1990-93 (see links). My involvement with stable isotopes (i.e. 13C) started during my Ph.D., when I was lucky enough to have met Phil Ineson, who became my PI in the CTCD soils team at York in 2002. Currently I am working on three main research topics:

        (i) Assessing the uncertainty in the UK carbon budget using GIS mapping techniques and field based research. Main focus will be the assessment of the new (2003) UK soil carbon map; I have established links to both Silsoe and MLURI research staff.

        (ii) Improving our understanding of soil carbon responses to environmental factors (e.g. temperature) and assessing the importance of separating soil microbial from root respiration; a main focus will be on forest soils and northern peatlands. A new approach is the York based mobile continuous-flow mass-spectrometer unit, which should enable us to instantaneously monitor and partition carbon fluxes under labelled and natural abundance levels in connection with treatments such as soil trenching and soil warming (e.g. infra-red light). We will also attempt to use this approach to link soil carbon fluxes to changes in the canopy environment via natural (photosynthetic) discrimination against 13C within the canopy.

        (iii) Improving existing soil carbon models (such as Century) in testing basic hypotheses in field and lab based approaches and feeding results back into the models. My work also assesses how to include or improve future use of other sources of data such as satellite imagery in order to improve soil carbon models.

        Publications

        • Fitter AH, Heinemeyer A, Husband R, et al. Global environmental change and the biology of arbuscular mycorrhizas: gaps and challenges CANADIAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY-REVUE CANADIENNE DE BOTANIQUE 82 (8): 1133-1139 AUG 2004

        • Heinemeyer A, Fitter AH. Impact of temperature on the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis: growth responses of the host plant and its AM fungal partner JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY 55 (396): 525-534 FEB 2004

        • Heinemeyer A, Ridgway KP, Edwards EJ, et al. Impact of soil warming and shading on colonization and community structure of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in roots of a native grassland community. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 10 (1): 52-64 JAN 2004

        • Staddon PL, Heinemeyer A, Fitter AH. Mycorrhizas and global environmental change: research at different scales PLANT AND SOIL 244 (1-2): 253-261 JUL 2002.

        • Fitter AH, Heinemeyer A, Staddon PL. The impact of elevated CO2 and global climate change on arbuscular mycorrhizas: a mycocentric approach. NEW PHYTOLOGIST 147 (1): 179-187 JUL 2000

        • H. Bruelheide and A. Heinemeyer. (2002). Climatic factors controlling the eastern and altitudinal distribution boundary of Digitalis purpurea L. in Germany. Flora 197: 475-490.

        For other details see my web page.

        Web links
        1. US EPA-Global Climate Change site
        2. GHG: Greenhouse gas information
        3. CEOS: Resources in Earth Observation & explanations of atmospheric terms
        4. ORNL: good database of climate and other datasets
        5. ESF: European Science Foundation
        6. ESF: the role of soils project (RSTCB)
        7. Century WEB-site
        8. RothC WEB-site
        9. AUS: National Carbon Accounting Program
        10. UK: soils catalogue
        11. Last but not least the Mycorrhizal Information Site

        Contact details

        Stockholm Environmental Institute SEI-York
        Sally Boldwin Building (Block D)
        Department of Biology
        University of York
        York YO 10 5YW, UK.
        http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ah126/AH_web.html
        SEI: +44 1904 43 2991
        Biology: +44 1904 32 8553
        Fax(SEI): +44 1904 43 2898
        E-mail: ah126@york.ac.uk

        Back to CTCD staff page

        Home | Mission Statement | CTCD Organisation | Science Projects
        Participating Organisations | People | News | Contacts