EEB Student Thesis Defense: Understanding Shifts in Soil Function Along a Successional Gradient in a Temperate Forest

About: Forest ecosystems provide a multitude of ecosystem services, making it crucial to understand their dynamics during succession. Soil responds to disturbances like fires and tree harvesting along with the forest, and thus plays a pivotal role in forest succession. The response of forest soils to fires and tree harvesting varies depending on factors such as climate and time. These factors can significantly influence soil functions including nitrogen availability, mineralization, and decomposition during succession. To understand how these soil functions are influenced by succession, I leveraged a burn chrono-sequence at the University of Michigan Biological Station. This talk will highlight the variation of soil function across a chronosequence and possible environmental drivers of soil function.
Email eeb.gradcoord@umich.edu for access to this seminar virtually.