11 Environmental Nutrient Cycling and Human Health
11 Environmental Nutrient Cycling and Human Health
Environmental Nutrient Cycling and Human Health
The importance of microorganisms is unquestionable in regard to how nutrients circulate throughout each ecosystem. There are direct and indirect links between Earth’s ecosystems and human health, though like other microbial networks, they are sometimes unfathomably complex.
Climate change may be the most obvious association between environmental and human health, however, the solution to balance is not one likely easily achieved. Each type of ecosystem is unique, and reflects different changes to anthropogenic activity. Global soil microbiomes and organic foliar litter have great impact on worldwide biogeochemical cycling, plant health, and bioremediation, where environmental changes can disrupt microbial taxonomic distribution and functional profiles (Albright et al., 2020, Naylor et al., 2020). The ocean microbiome is vast considering it is the largest ecosystem on the planet, and plays a tremendous part in biogeochemical cycling, ecosystem dynamics, and response to climate change(Moran, 2015, Acinas et al., 2019, Marz et al., 2021). Also, since much of the ocean microbiome is uncharted, it could also serve as a major untapped reservoir for novel and progressive biosynthetic products (Paoli et al., 2021). Other aquatic environments such rivers, lakes, wetlands, and freshwater systems and their interaction with sediments and plants greatly influence carbon and other nutrient cycles in their respective ecosystems (Amado and Roland, 2017, Avila et al., 2019, Trevathan-Tackett et al., 2021).
In a cyclic manner, climate change can also greatly affect microbiome dynamics of large ecosystems like glaciers, tundra, permafrost, and even dry deserts, which can further exacerbate disturbances in that region and beyond. (Hamilton et al., 2013, Tripathi et al., 2019, Vigneron et al., 2019, Hough et al., 2020, Ray et al., 2020). These environments harbor several dormant microorganisms that can produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, and if they become metabolically active en masse, this could drastically increase contribution to climate change (Feng et al., 2020). Not only can ecosystem biodiversity be affected, but these changes can impact human society and health. Thus, it is important to consider analytical strategies to better understand global change so future actions can be coordinated to mitigate any negative consequences, and evaluating microbiomes may be part of the solution.
Global Change and the Soil Microbiome: A Human-Health Perspective
Article by Ochoa-Hueso, 2017 licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).
The importance of the gut and the soil microbiomes as determinants of human and ecosystem health, respectively, is gaining rapid acceptation in the medical and ecological literatures. This suggests that there is a wealth of highly transferable knowledge about the microbial ecology of human and