What role do microbes play in the cycling of carbon and their possible influence on global warming and role of microbes in environmental conservation?
Microbes are involved in many processes, including the carbon and nitrogen cycles, and are responsible for both using and producing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Microbes can have positive and negative responses to temperature, making them an important component of climate change models. Microbes play an important role in climate because they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they eat. Bacteria and their main predators, protists, account for more than 40 times the biomass of all animals on Earth. As a result, they have a huge effect on carbon dioxide emissions. The most significant effect of the microbes on earth is their ability to recycle the primary elements that make up all living systems, especially carbon, oxygen, and nitrogenPrimary production involves photosynthetic organisms which take up CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to organic material.
Soil microbes can break down plant organic matter to carbon dioxide or convert it to dissolved organic carbon (DOC) compounds. This leads either to long-term carbon storage, because DOC can bind to soil particles, or to the release of carbon back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Microbes have prominent roles related to climate change. They produce and consume the three dominant gases that are responsible for 98% of the increased warming: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Currently, microbes are used to clean up pollution treatment in processes known as 'bioremediation'. Bioremediation uses micro-organisms to reduce pollution through the biological degradation of pollutants into non-toxic substances. Soil microbes such as growth-promoting bacteria and fungi have proven to sequester carbon into the soil. Through this process, microbes are able to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and therefore can be utilized to tackle the issue of climate change.
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