Global Change Ecology

  • Experimental, cylindrical chambers on a wetland at dusk, lit up in red, green, yellow or purple

    GENX methane experiment at night

  • Wide view of a grassy wetland, with a boardwalk and clear experimental chambers with red, yellow, green or blue rims

    GENX methane experiment in summer

  • White pipes with plants growing in them and cables running out of them, set at three different heights in a flooded area.

    GENX sea-level rise experiment

  • A wetland divided into squares by a boardwalk, with heat lamps, wires and white boxes inside each patch

    SMARTX warming experiment in spring

  • Close-up of a clump of soil held above a boardwalk, with roots holding the soil together

    Root core taken from the wetland

Principal Investigator

The Global Change Ecology Lab combines biogeochemistry and microbial ecology to better understand how wetlands and other ecosystems respond to global change. In particular, we focus on the feedback between plants and microbes and how these interactions shape the dynamic, ecosystem-level responses to the global change factors affecting coastal ecosystems, including warming, elevated CO2, and sea level rise.

Many of our projects are focused on coastal wetlands. Along with the Biogeochemistry Lab, we manage SERC’s Global Change Research Wetland.

Current research themes include:

  • Understanding how plant-microbe interactions control wetland carbon sequestration under global change scenarios
  • Investigating how methane cycling dynamics respond to warming and sea-level rise
  • Improving coastal ecosystem representation in Earth Systems Models

 

Research Topics

Signature Programs