Projects
It is well-accepted that human activities, particularly land conversion and fossil fuel burning, have fundamentally altered the structure and function of Earth's ecosystems. These alterations range from subtle, such as loss of a single species, to profound, such as shifts in global climate or changes in ocean circulation. At the same time, a growing and developing human population increasingly depends on the important services that ecosystems provide. Our ability to solve many environmental and societal problems over the next several decades will depend on our understanding of how ecosystems function and our ability to predict how those functions will respond to projected environmental changes across spatial and temporal scales. This is the central paradigm driving research questions in the our lab. New and on-going projects in the lab center on three main themes.
- Microbial and plant functional responses to environmental change in northern hardwood forest ecosystems
- Controls on the production and emission of greenhouse gasses from soil
- Biogeochemical linkages between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
Our approach is to combine manipulative field experiments with controlled laboratory or greenhouse experiments to answer complex ecological questions. We employ a variety of methods including stable/radio isotopes and molecular-based community characterization techniques.
