Engineer tools for atmospheric and environmental manipulation to mitigate climate disturbances.

Engineer aerosolizable microbiomes to facilitate cloud formation and alter sunlight irradiation or precipitation.

• Technical achievement: Engineer nutritionally self-sustaining microbiomes (i.e., with heterotrophs and autotrophs) so microbes can survive without reseeding.
• Technical achievement: Produce microbiomes with ice-nucleating bacteria that can increase rainfall and snow in target areas.
• Technical achievement: Engineer microbiomes to produce dimethyl sulfide and promote cloud condensation.

Engineer microbiomes that help maintain or increase Earth’s albedo.

• Technical achievement: Deploy ice-nucleating microbiomes to help maintain snowpack and create more reflective surfaces in alpine and polar environments.
• Technical achievement: Engineer microbiomes that concentrate salt on the surface of high-salinity soils, to increase albedo and reduce soil salinity.

Enable and advance carbon sequestration from the environment.

Use microbiomes to enhance natural carbon sequestration processes.

• Technical achievement: Develop computational models to characterize the role of viral shunts in oceanic carbon sequestration.
• Technical achievement: Design microbiomes that can be stably deployed into oceans to increase carbon capture via viral shunts.
• Technical achievement: Engineer methanogen-containing microbiomes to produce methane hydrates (i.e., crystalline methane structures) as means of sequestering carbon in the deep ocean.
• Technical achievement: Use ice-nucleating microbiomes to help preserve permafrost and prevent carbon release.
• Technical achievement: Create pollutant-degrading microbiomes that colonize wetland plants to prevent pollution-related wetland degradation and support carbon sequestration.

Engineer plant rhizosphere communities to promote carbon capture via plant root exudates.

• Technical achievement: Increase carbon capture phenotypes of plants through overexpression of root exudate compounds.
• Technical achievement: Engineer rhizosphere communities to convert root exudates into stable complexes.

Footnotes