August 2024: Chapter 2 is published!

I am super excited to announce that the work that serves as the second chapter of my dissertation (and my first first-author publication!) is officially published in the journal Ecology! We assessed recovery from historically high rates of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition in a Great Lakes temperate forest, specifically focusing on soil carbon storage and microbial mechanisms that contribute to carbon storage and loss. 

I started this project a few months into my Ph.D. back in 2021. It's been a fun journey working with new and old faces to bring this story to life these past few years.

Figure 3. Standardized effect sizes of the nitrogen deposition treatment on organic horizon carbon soil carbon throughout the history of our long-term experiment. Following the termination of N inputs in 2017, we observe losses of the soil carbon that accumulated under the high N conditions.

January 2024: I passed my qualifying exams!

In December, I began our department's two-part qualifying exam journey with my research proposal department seminar and subsequent closed-door oral defense. Following a successful research proposal defense, I recently took my prelim exam, which is a closed-door oral exam in all areas of Soil Science. I'm very happy to announce that I passed and am officially a Ph.D. candidate! 

September 2023: Another field season

Another field season is officially in the books! In slight disbelief that this summer marked my 7th consecutive summer conducting fieldwork in and around the University of Michigan Biological Station (yet, my first where seemingly everything that could have possibly gone wrong, did in fact go wrong). Despite the unprecedented field stress, it's always a joy introducing undergraduates to the place I first discovered I could be a scientist as an undergraduate myself. Next up: RNA extractions.