Advisor: Chris Gough, Ph.D., Department of Biology

I am interested in how forest carbon cycling processes respond to the breath of disturbances that are increasing due to climate change. This is important because, among the many other ecosystem services forests provide, they act as a vial global carbon sink. Questions I seek to answer include, how resistant are forests to disturbances of different sources and severities? What structural and functional mechanisms drive a forests ability to be resistant to disturbance with respect to the carbon cycle? I am particularly interested in these questions in the context of soil carbon processes.