Human Impacts on Environmental Microbial Communities

Dear Colleagues,

All natural environments involve characteristic microbial communities. Microorganisms are essential features in all natural material cycles. A high diversity of bacteria reside in water and soils and live in symbiosis with macroorganisms, and they can act as dangerous pathogens for humans, animals, and plants, demanding a deeper understanding of the relations between microbial communities and their ecological environment. In addition to natural factors, human impacts are very important in the formation and change in soil microbial communities. This is evident in recent agricultural, industrial, and mining activities, waste deposition, and remediation. In addition to these activities, former humans, dating back to pre-industrial times, the middle age, and prehistory, imprinted their traces into soil bacterial communities, too. This Special Issue is devoted to all aspects related to investigations of both recent and ancient human impacts on soil bacterial communities. It explores advanced technologies such as NGS and microfluidic techniques, as well as investigations on the importance of soil microbial communities in the recent state and usability of soils, and in the search for new strains with special ecological functions and new specific metabolic features.

Prof. Dr. Johann Michael Köhler
Guest Editor

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