Mary K. Firestone
Foundationally mapped how photosynthate carbon flows from living roots into rhizosphere microbial communities.
The record
- Standing
- foundational work
- Based
- University of California, Berkeley (ESPM) · United States
- Focus area
- Rhizosphere Ecology
- Works on
- rhizosphere carbon flow, root exudates, microbial community assembly, nitrogen cycling, N2O production.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Professor of soil microbiology at UC Berkeley since 1979, widely credited with integrating microbial ecology into terrestrial biogeochemistry. Her lab’s 14C pulse-labeling work (Norton, Smith & Firestone 1990) traced root carbon into soil microbes, and later collaborations (Zhalnina et al. 2018, Nature Microbiology) showed root exudate chemistry drives rhizosphere community assembly. Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America since 1995.
Where to read them
- Mary K. Firestone — lab or personal site
- Norton, Smith & Firestone (1990) Carbon flow in the rhizosphere of ponderosa pine seedlings
- Zhalnina et al. (2018) Dynamic root exudate chemistry and microbial substrate preferences
- Firestone & Davidson (1989) hole-in-the-pipe N2O model
Sources for this record
Corrections
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