Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1992
M.S. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 1988
B.S. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1980
My research focuses on understanding how changes in land use and other human activities alter the structure of ecosystems and the ways that ecosystems cycle nutrients and organic matter. I work on soil carbon and nitrogen cycles, fluxes of trace gases between soils and the atmosphere, movements of elements from forests and grasslands to streams and estuaries, and changes to vegetation caused by human actions. One of my research projects investigates deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Together with colleagues in Brazil and at the Ecosystems Center, I examine how tropical forest clearing for cattle and the emerging trend toward intensification of use of existing pastures alter the rates of cycling of soil nutrients and organic matter, the emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from soils to the atmosphere and how these modifications to the upland soils of the Amazon alter the ecology of streams and rivers. We also study how nutrients are processed as they move from small streams to larger rivers. I seek to understand basic links between deforestation, emerging agricultural practices and movement of nutrients and trace gases between soils and the atmosphere and soils and the surface waters of the Amazon.
