Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2024-2025

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

Research Summary: The importance of precipitation on plant growth is well-established, especially in grasslands which are particularly sensitive to precipitation changes. Climate change has and will continue to affect global precipitation patterns, and extreme events and seasons will become more frequent. My research focuses on how a site’s history of being exposed to some extreme event changes its responses – to future extreme events, or by showing unexpected changes in “normal” years after extremes end. Changes to precipitation patterns and the influence of repeated extremes can have profound effects on grassland systems, altering carbon storage capacity, forage production, and other ecosystem services.