This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Extreme heat waves disrupt life in soil. Soil bacteria that produce and resist antibiotics switch into survival mode, temporarily reducing the number of resistance genes.
At the same time, heat and drought are causing significant damage to soils and ecosystems, especially in cold, wet regions such as the Netherlands. This is evident from a large-scale European study by soil ecologist Franciska de Vries (University of Amsterdam) and colleagues. The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to De Vries, many people are unaware that soils form an important reservoir of both antibiotics—which we can extract—and resistance genes. "In the soil, there is a kind of 'war' going on: bacteria both produce antibiotics and arm themselves against them with resistance genes," she explains. At warm temperatures and in wetter conditions, the number of resistance genes increases.
Bacteria then become insensitive to antibiotics and can pass this trait on to other bacteria. It becomes problematic when those genes end up in pathogenic bacteria that infect humans or animals. It has often been assumed that climate change accelerates the spread of resistance genes.
But what happens during extreme weather conditions such as heat, drought and floods that occur not slowly, but suddenly? "Before we got to that specific question, we first wanted to understand in general how soil organisms respond to extreme weather conditions," says de Vries. "Soils, for example, are very important for sequestering CO₂.
What happens to this function during extreme weather?" With her colleagues, she collected soils from all over Europe: "From Iceland to Greece and from Sweden to Spain and even the Russian steppe." The researchers exposed these soils to extreme conditions in climate chambers: severe drought, flooding, alternating frost and thaw, and a short but intense heat wave. The researchers turned out to be very good at predicting how certain soils react to extremes. "Quite logically, hot soils can withstand heat better than cold and wet soils like those we have in Sweden, Iceland and the Netherlands," says de Vries.
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