1996 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Indirect Estimation of Microbial Biomass
Authors : H. Rössner, R. Kuhnert-Finkernagel, R. Öhlinger, T. Beck, A. Baumgarten, B. Heilmann
Published in: Methods in Soil Biology
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Included in: Professional Book Archive
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In soils, microorganisms occur in great density and variety. Bacteria and fungi are the most abundant microorganisms, protozoans and algae occur in smaller numbers. The proportion of carbon biomass in the soil has been found to be 1–3% of the organic carbon (Sparling 1985). Investigations on cultivated soils showed that the proportion of the metabolically active microbial biomass is 1–5 and 2–8% of the organic matter in arable and grassland soils, respectively (Beck et al. 1992). Biomass determinations based on mathematical analysis of the respiration curves suggest that only 2–30% of the total biomass is metabolically active (Van de Werf and Verstraete 1987a,b).