Former Ecoss Postdoctoral researcher Natasja van Gestel, now at Texas Tech University, and Bruce Hungate and Paul Dijkstra from ECOSS are using deglaciated area in Antarctica to investigate plants and microbial responses to warming. Two graduate students will be integral to the success of the study: Kelly McMillen (Texas Tech Read more…
Ecoss research demonstrated that grasslands with more diverse plant species pull down and store more carbon per acre: in this illustration, the same plot of soil from a diverse vs. depauperate grassland shows more belowground investment in deeper roots and denser storage of carbon in a diverse array of plants. Read more…
In a groundbreaking study, Ecoss research produced a monetary value for biodiversity by demonstrating that having more diverse plant species enables a grassland to draw down and store more carbon. This finding allows calculations of how much carbon storage is lost or gained per species added or lost from a Read more…
Measuring the growth rates of individual bacteria taxa within a mixed sample gives a powerful view of the moving parts of a living ecosystem, especially when that sample is soil, where so many ecological processes occur. Ecoss research pioneered “qSIP” — a new method for gathering many simultaneous bacterial growth Read more…