Achievement

IGERT trainees (Bradley-Cook, Heindel, and Vario) have formed an interdisciplinary soils group to study the effects of climate on carbon cycling and soil erosion. Their research is focused on Greenland tundra and New England forests and draws on methods and models from the disciplines of ecology, earth sciences, and geography. They integrate remote sensing and aerial photography to determine landscape vegetation and soil relationships and relate this to glacial history and soil carbon accumulation. Heindel and Levy have teamed to conduct a cosmogenic isotope study to constrain the temporal dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet margin during the Holocene and to date erosional features of unknown origin. This group of ecologists and earth scientists is advancing basic knowledge on the rates of soil carbon accumulation following deglaciation and how temperature influences soil carbon cycling processes, an important feedback to atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.