Dr. Meret Aeppli
About
My goal is to understand the controls on carbon storage in sediments and soils. Understanding these controls will help improve predictions of global carbon budgets. My research focuses on lake sediments and soils of river floodplains. These environments are important components of the global carbon cycle because they store significant amounts of carbon. I investigate if the preservation of organic carbon in lake sediments and floodplain soils is linked to energetic constraints on microbial respiration. Microorganisms obtain energy from the oxidation of organic carbon which they couple to the reduction of electron acceptors. However, not all organic carbon-electron acceptor couples release enough energy to sustain the microbial metabolism. I elucidate possible energetic constraints on microbial respiration by examining differences in the chemistries of organic carbon and electron acceptors across different sediments and soils, along sediment/soil depths, and over sediment/soil incubation times.
Funding
09.2019-02.2021 Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship, Swiss National Science Foundation
Publications
Aeppli, M., Vranic, S., Kaegi, R., Kretzschmar, R., Brown, A. R., Voegelin, A., Hofstetter, T. B., Sander, M. (2019). Decreases in Iron Oxide Reducibility during Microbial Reductive Dissolution and Transformation of Ferrihydrite. Environmental Science and Technology, 53 (15): 8736–46. DOI 10.1021/acs.est.9b01299.
Aeppli, M., Kaegi, R., Kretzschmar, R., Voegelin, A., Hofstetter, T. B., Sander, M. (2019). Electrochemical Analysis of Changes in Iron Oxide Reducibility during Abiotic Ferrihydrite Transformation into Goethite and Magnetite. Environmental Science and Technology,, 53 (7): 3568–78. DOI 10.1021/acs.est.8b07190
Aeppli, M., Voegelin, A., Gorski, C. A., Hofstetter, T. B., Sander, M. (2018). Mediated Electrochemical Reduction of Iron (Oxyhydr-)Oxides under Defined Thermodynamic Boundary Conditions. Environmental Science and Technology, 52 (2): 560–70. DOI 10.1021/acs.est.7b04411.
Armanious, A., Aeppli, M., Jacak, R., Refardt, D., Sigstam, T., Kohn, T., Sander, M. (2016). Viruses at Solid Water Interfaces: A Systematic Assessment of Interactions Driving Adsorption. Environmental Science and Technology, 50 (2): 732–43. DOI 10.1021/acs.est5b04644.
Franchini, A. G., Henneberger, R., Aeppli, M., Zeyer, J. (2015). Methane dynamics in an alpine fen: a field-based study on methanogenic and methanotrophic microbial communities. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 91 (3). DOI 10.1093/femsec/fiu032.
Armanious, A., Aeppli, M., Sander, M. (2014). Dissolved Organic Matter Adsorption to Model Surfaces: Adlayer Formation, Properties, and Dynamics at the Nanoscale. Environmental Science and Technology, 48 (16): 9420–29. DOI 10.1021/es5026917.
Personal website: https://meretaeppli.github.io/