Sustainability Leadership Fellowship Cohort: 2011-2012

Ph.D. Student, Department of Biology

Research Summary: Climate change will affect all of Earth‘s ecosystems and yet the responses of soils have been comparatively understudied, despite the importance that soils and their associated communities play in supporting all terrestrial ecosystems through services such as decomposition, cycling nutrients for use by plants, filtering water and providing food, fuel and fiber for humans. My work investigates how soil animal communities may respond to changes in precipitation patterns resulting form climate change, which I hope to be able to correlate to possible shifts in the services these organisms provide, as well as overall ecosystem functioning (both natural and cultivated systems).