Biography
Prof. Ximei Zhang
Prof. Ximei Zhang
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
Title: The maintenance mechanism of soil microbial diversity under climate changes
Abstract: 
We have systematically explored the maintenance mechanism of soil microbial diversity in the northern farming-pastoral ecotone under the background of climate changes. The research mainly includes three aspects: first, the environmental change factors and management strategies which had great influence on soil microbial community were identified; second, the physicochemical mechanisms that cause these effects were analyzed; finally, the theoretical mechanism of these effects was analyzed from the perspective of ecological process. The main academic contributions include: 1) revealing the direction and mechanism of microbial positive feedback to climate warming at the molecular level; 2) observing specific correspondence among global change factors, ecological processes and microbial community components; 3) showing that nitrogen deposition had the greatest effect on soil microbial community in the northern farming-pastoral ecotone; 4) proving the necessity of protecting soil microorganism; 5) emphazing the necessity of adding microbial seed bank; 6) identifying the close relationship between plant productivity and microbial functional diversity; 7) observing that the combination of moderate disturbance and resource niche is important for maintaining microbial diversity. As the first or corresponding author, I have published these results as more than 30 scientific papers in professional journals such as ISME Journal, Global Change Biology and New Phytologist.
Biography: 
Ximei Zhang, Ph.D., Professor, Doctoral supervisor, Institute of Agricultural Environment and Sustainable Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He has been selected as the Outstanding Young agricultural Scientist of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the National Youth Talent Program, and the Agricultural Talent of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He received his PhD from Beijing Normal University in 2011 and has been engaged in research at Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Georgia Institute of Technology. He mainly studies soil microbial ecology, the maintenance mechanism of soil microbial diversity and soil microbial geography. In particular, three basic studies have been carried out in the field of maintenance and regulation mechanism of soil microbial diversity in dryland. First, environmental change factors and management strategies that have great influence on soil microbial communities have been identified. The physicochemical mechanisms that cause these effects are then analyzed; finally, the theoretical mechanism of these effects is analyzed from the perspective of ecological process. Relevant research results (> 40 publications) have been published in Professional journals such as ISME Journal, iScience, Global Change Biology, New Phytologist, Science China Life Sciences, mSystems, Environmental Microbiology, Molecular Ecology, Soil Biology and Biochemistry.