Ecoss researcher Michelle Mack is leading a $1 million NASA-funded project to measure the extreme fire activity in boreal forests and its effects on arctic tundra. Based on the number of acres burned, 2015 is shaping up to be the second most extreme fire year during the past decade in North […]
Northern Arizona University: PhD and MS positions in Ecosystem Ecology are available in the Center for Ecosystem Science in Society (Ecoss) at Northern Arizona University. The Ecoss mission is to conduct high-impact, innovative research on ecosystems and how they respond to and shape environmental change, to train next-gen scientists, and […]
Winter 2016 Prospective Student Retreat Was Great Ecoss hosted prospective graduate students for a two day visit this winter in February. The next Student Retreat will take place in the winter/spring 2017. Check back here for details as they become available. Attendance was by invitation only, and prospective students had […]
Michelle Mack describes the effects the wildfires in Alaska this summer will have on the carbon emissions from permafrost in this story in the Washington Post. “Beyond the direct carbon emissions from fire, loss of the insulating organic layer is likely to destabilize permafrost, leading to thaw, decomposition and release […]
Soil is a complex ecosystem with diverse microenvironments ranging from bulk soil with low quality substrates and no or very limited microbial growth, to high quality C-rich environments near decomposing litter and rhizosphere where microbial growth and death rates are high. Soil contains different microbial communities, supports varying microbial activities […]
In Alaska: Too Many Fires, Not Enough Snow “Normally a cold winter would help re-freeze the soil and slow the melting of permafrost. But the warmer air might prevent that from happening now…As things warm up, places like Alaska that have a lot of carbon stored in the soil might […]
When new carbon enters soil, especially carbon that is easily assimilated and decomposed by soil microorganisms, a chain reaction occurs leading to the breakdown of older soil carbon, carbon that would otherwise have remained stable. Current theory does not explain this chain reaction, sometimes called the “priming effect.” But understanding […]
Ecoss studies the microbial communities of the human body and the implications for disease including STDs and HIV, as well as analyzing the microbial community using bioinformatics, community ecology theory and Bayesian statistical modeling.
We study antibiotic resistance in human pathogens, genetic sampling of meat for antibiotic resistance, methods to develop a molecular database for strains of E. coli in urinary tract infections, and food safety of kosher vs non-kosher chicken.
Heat waves in Arizona: Do microbial symbionts buffer the effects of heat waves?