Planet Earth, our blue-green spaceship, is under anthropogenic pressure, causing long-lasting or even irreversible changes to its passengers and their habitats. Given the emerging knowledge of how single-cell life shapes all multicellular life and Earth as a whole, it is important to consider the microbial roles in the future path of our spaceship. Global change microbiology is a rapidly growing research field on microbial responses to global warming, overuse and pollution and on feedback mechanisms and functions that affect Earth’s element cycles and planetary health. This field will provide essential knowledge for navigating our spaceship into a sustainable future.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
The neglected role of micronutrients in predicting soil microbial structure
npj Biofilms and Microbiomes Open Access 27 December 2022
-
A combined microbial and biogeochemical dataset from high-latitude ecosystems with respect to methane cycle
Scientific Data Open Access 04 November 2022
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Falkowski, P. G., Fenchel, T. & Delong, E. F. The microbial engines that drive Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. Science 320, 1034–1039 (2008).
Thompson, L. R. et al. A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity. Nature 551, 457–463 (2017).
Lewis, S. L. & Maslin, M. A. Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519, 171–180 (2015).
Sterner, T. et al. Policy design for the Anthropocene. Nat. Sustain. 2, 14–21 (2019).
Hoegh-Guldberg, O. et al. in Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5°C Ch. 3 (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) (IPCC, 2019).
Gillings, M. R., Paulsen, I. T. & Tetu, S. G. Ecology and evolution of the human microbiota: fire, farming and antibiotics. Genes 6, 841–857 (2015).
Le Quere, C. et al. Global carbon budget 2017. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 10, 405–448 (2018).
United Nations Environment Programme. Frontiers 2018/19: emerging issues of environmental concern. UNEP https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/frontiers-201819-emerging-issues-environmental-concern (2019).
Pimm, S. L. et al. The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection. Science 344, 1246752 (2014).
McFall-Ngai, M. et al. Animals in a bacterial world, a new imperative for the life sciences. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 3229–3236 (2013).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boetius, A. Global change microbiology — big questions about small life for our future. Nat Rev Microbiol 17, 331–332 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0197-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0197-2
This article is cited by
-
The neglected role of micronutrients in predicting soil microbial structure
npj Biofilms and Microbiomes (2022)
-
A combined microbial and biogeochemical dataset from high-latitude ecosystems with respect to methane cycle
Scientific Data (2022)
-
Effects of warming and CO2 enrichment on O2 consumption, porewater oxygenation and pH of subtidal silt sediment
Aquatic Sciences (2021)