TerraForms User Program – Capability Development, User Science, Collaborations, and Deployment
Authors:
Arunima Bhattacharjee1* ([email protected], PI), Jayde Aufrecht1, Jocelyn Richardson2, Vimal Balasubramanian1, Natalie Sadler1, Nicholas Reichart1, Ryan McClure1, Christopher Anderton1, Erin Nuccio3, Ritimukta Sarangi2, Jennifer Pett-Ridge3, Kirsten Hofmockel1
Institutions:
1Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; 2SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; 3Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Abstract
Soils are highly heterogeneous and opaque and a challenging medium for spatial and in situ characterization. Yet spatial characterization of soils is essential to comprehend the pore scale biogeochemistry that contributes to ecosystem-scale events. Reduced complexity platforms, such as soil micromodels that emulate soil properties, have demonstrated the potential for in situ visualization of microbial and plant growth dynamics. Inspired by previous studies, this project developed “TerraForms”, a platform that replicates specific physical and chemical properties of soils, reducing the complexity of analysis for soil-driven processes. Terra- Forms support plant and microbial growth yet allow the combined use of mass spectrometry and spectroscopic imaging methods to characterize processes in a realistic soil-like environment.
TerraForms are manufactured from an ultraviolet curable resin with a conductive indium tin oxide–coated glass backing using a combination of Bosch etching and soft lithography techniques. The soil habitats can be custom built to reproduce the heterogeneous pore size distribution of soil properties, including soil pores and soil microaggregates. Moreover, research can amend the soil habitats with soil minerals such as potassium (K) feldspar, hematite, and kaolinite to study effects of mineralogy on microbial and plant growth. The study has demonstrated that these polymer glass-based platforms are compatible with mass spectrometry imaging techniques, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray analysis, and synchrotron-based techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy (XANES). This presentation will highlight results from collaborations built over the past years that helped create the TerraForms capability and user program.
These collaborations include early adopters and advisors who contributed to the creation of several of the TerraForms platforms and helped design rigorous tests that ensured workflow development and deployment to the user community, including Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL) Soil Microbiome Science Focus Area (SFA) and the Trail Ecosystems for the Advancement of Microbiome Science (TEAMS) group. Deployment to the user community has included several outreach activities, such as Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory webinars, workshops, and TerraForms publications, to train users how to use these platforms and downstream sample preparation for multimodal analysis. This talk will demonstrate specific examples of user science that used TerraForms for their work as well as collaborations with Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s carbon negative Earthshot (TerraForming Soil Energy Earthshot Research Center), and PNNL’s Soil Microbiome SFA and TEAMS.
Specifically, this talk will demonstrate the use of mineral micromodels for visualizing mineral-derived K uptake and transformation by fungi under drought. This presentation will also discuss using mineral RhizoChips to study mineral transformations and inorganic nutrient uptake by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Finally, some of the newer developments within the TerraForms capability will be discussed, such as creating workflows for developing TerraForms representative of soil cores collected from field sites and upscaling pore scale biogeochemistry.
Image
TerraForms are tunable environments for exploring soil processes. [Courtesy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory]