Updates!
I'll be at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, CA in December!
I'm always interested in meeting new faces and chatting science. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'll be there too.
September 2023
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.
August 2023
Thank you to the Ecological Society of America for allowing me the opportunity to give my oral presentation, titled: Assessing ecosystem-level response to recovery from historically high rates of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition, at the 2023 annual meeting in Portland, OR! I had a great time at my first ESA and look forward to the meetings to come!
May 2023
Thank you to the UW-Madison Center for Ecology and the Environment for inviting me to give a talk at the annual Spring Symposium and to everyone who came out to hear what I've been working on! This year's event consisted of two keynote speeches by Dr. James Albert of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, talks from graduate students and postdocs, and a poster session featuring undergraduate and graduate student research. It was an excellent event filled with really cool science from all ecological disciplines!
More information on the UW-Madison Center for Ecology and the Environment, including the 2023 Spring Symposium as well as past and upcoming events, can be found here.
March 2023
I'm thrilled to announce that my 2023 O.N. Allen Small Grants Program application, titled: Measuring the expression of fungal genes associated with mediating soil carbon storage during forest recovery from anthropogenic nitrogen deposition: the keystone of a genes to ecosystem story, has been recommended for funding! The grant will fund, and the project will serve as, the third chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation. Sampling is set to kickoff this fall. More information and updates to come!
More information on the project proposal can be found here.
November 2022
Thank you to the Soil Science Society of America for allowing me the opportunity to give my oral presentation, titled: Assessing the effect of nitrogen deposition and climatic variation on soil organic matter (SOM) chemistry in northern hardwood forests, at the 2022 Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD! I had a great time giving my first oral presentation at a conference, chatting with friends new and old, and even learned how to crack a crab with some fellow Freedman and Whitman lab members.
September 2022
Survived and conquered the first field season of my Ph.D.! Feeling so full of gratitude for the ability to return home to sample and thankful for the forests and people of northern MI who always welcome me back with open arms. Now the real work begins!
Photos from the trips featuring Zac calling 911 after getting the van stuck on a two-track in a remote area in Manistee National Forest with no cell or internet service.
