Laurentian University soil scientist gets down and dirty in northern Ontario

Morning North7:35Summer U: Wetland soils

For our Summer U series, we checked in this week with Nathan Basiliko. He's an associate professor in the biology department at Laurentian University. He talked to Markus about his research on wetland soil.Laurentian University biologist Nathan Basiliko may spend a lot of time in the mud, but he's hoping his efforts will make the planet a cleaner and healthier place.

"I'm a soil scientist," said Basiliko, who studies what he calls "the often under-appreciated microbes, the bacteria, and fungi and other small organisms that really do drive the lion's share of what makes these ecosystems tick" in the peatlands of northern Ontario.

Those microbes do a number of things — from promoting or inhibiting plant grow to emitting or consuming greenhouse gases.

In the case of peatlands, "they've stored an enormous amount of atmospheric carbon," said Basiliko.

That's because, when plant material in a peatland dies underwater, it doesn't decompose like a leaf would on a forest floor. 

"You get this buildup of metres and metres of dead biomass," Basiliko said. "The worry is that these sites are susceptible to environmental change."

"Drought," said Basiliko, "is a big worry with these sites."

When water levels drop, more organic materials are exposed to oxygen and the plant material decomposes quickly, releasing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, he said. 

One of Basilko's research projects is examining the effect of historical pollution on how microbes function.

Decades of nickel and copper smelting in Sudbury released tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere that settled onto the peatlands. 

By collecting gases emitted from peatlands, Laurentian researchers hope to better understand the effect of that pollution on the microbes. 

"I think the Sudbury story is really important for other industrially developing parts of the world," Basiliko said.