Groundwater rock microcosms

This study aims to investigate the role of rock-organic C for the groundwater microbiome. We incubated crushed carbonate rocks of two origins with anoxic and oxic groundwater of the Hainich Critical Zone Exploratory. To track the uptake of rock-organic C by groundwater microbes, we combined natural abundance 14C-analysis and 13C-stable isotope probing, and analyzed the organic C pools by rockeval pyrolysis and high-resolution mass spectometry.