Soil fertility is associated with fungal and bacterial richness whereas pH is associated with community composition in polar soil microbial communities

Steven Siciliano, Department of Soil Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada


Dr. Steven D. Siciliano is a Professor of Soil Toxicology at the University of Saskatchewan and Director of the NSERC CREATE Program in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment which is an advanced risk assessment training program for PhD students. Prof. Siciliano is a world leading toxicologist investigating how polluted soil poisons humans and how humans poison soil. He has worked extensively across Canada's Arctic and Australia's Antarctic developing novel approaches to assessing soil toxicology in polar soil ecosystems. As part of these investigations, Prof. Siciliano investigates soil microbial ecosystems and how these ecosystems respond to abiotic and biotic stressors, such as climate change and pollution. More recently, Prof. Siciliano has focussed on brownfields with an emphasis on developing new toxicological and remediation models that will decrease the time and cost associated with site remediation and assessment. In 2006 and then in 2011, Prof. Siciliano was awarded a NSERC Discovery Accelerator award which recognizes outstanding Canadian researchers with a potential for world class breakthroughs. Prof. Siciliano has published over 123 peer-reviewed book chapters and articles dealing with polluted soils and these contributions have been cited by other researchers over 3300 times.