Dra. Claudia Czimzik

Associate Professor at the Department of Earth System Sciences at the University of California, Irvine

Claudia received her undergraduate and graduate education in Germany, and obtained a Diplom in Geoecology from the University of Bayreuth (1999) and a PhD from the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry and Friedrich-Schiller-University (2003) in Jena. She joined UCI’s Department of Earth System Science (ESS) as a researcher in 2003, and the faculty in 2011
Studies the impacts of climate change, alterations in natural disturbance frequencies (i.e. fire) and changes in land use and management (i.e. urbanization) on the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems.
Appreciates and predicts how human activities will impact the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems in the future and how changing terrestrial ecosystems will feedback to the climate system.
Focuses on high-latitude ecosystems (arctic tundra and boreal forests).
Expert in how climate and land-use change affect the storage of carbon in land ecosystems and the exchange of carbon dioxide, methane and carbonaceous aerosols between the land and the atmosphere.
Key interests: Climate change, Soil, Boreal and Arctic Ecosystems, Mega-Cities.

More Information: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/czimczik/

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Dr. Davey Jones

Professor of Soil and Environmental Sciences
Bangor University, Walles, UK

Davey Jones holds a Professorial Chair in Soil and Environmental Science at Bangor University and a Professorial Chair position at the Universirty of Western Australia. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow held jointly between Cornell University and the US Department of Agriculture in the USA (with Prof Leon Kochian). He also carried out postdoctoral work under Prof Simon Gilroy at Penn State University.  A major focus of his research is on understanding below-ground processes with specific focus on nutrients and human pathogen behavior in soil-plant-microbial systems. Current applications of his work include (1) the implementation of strategies for controlling E. coli O157 and viral pathogens in agricultural, freshwater and marine ecosystems, (2) promoting carbon sequestration in agricultural systems and understanding the factors regulating carbon cycling and greenhouse gas emissions, (3) developing ways to improve nutrient use efficiency in cropping systems with specific focus on nitrogen and phosphorus, (4) nutrient dynamics in polar (Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems), (5) devising strategies for the effective reuse of wastes for land restoration and remediation (heavy metals and organic pollutants), (6) soil microbial diversity and ecosystem functioning, (7) modelling nutrients dynamics in the plant-soil-microbial and freshwater ecosystems, (8) understanding  the barriers to technology adoption by farmers, (9) the flow of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the  environment, and (10) the impact of flooding, drought and ozone on ecosystem functioning (including tipping points) and potential strategies to enhance ecosystem resilience.
He has published more than 420 scientific journal articles (ISI H-index = 70; 20,830 citations) and has advised government on both their waste and climate change policies. His research is mainly funded via NERC, BBSRC, Welsh Government, Defra and the European Union.riculum

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Dr. Laurent Philippot

Researcher, French National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA). Dijon, France

The research theme of my group is to understand the ecology of soil microbial communities, especially those involved in nitrogen cycling. We mostly focus on denitrification, which is a microbial respiratory process consisting in the reduction of soluble nitrogen forms, nitrate and nitrite, into gas, nitric oxide, nitrous oxide and dinitrogen when oxygen is limited. Denitrification is the main biological process responsible for the return of fixed nitrogen to the atmosphere, thus completing the N-cycle. It is also responsible together with nitrification for the loss of nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient and for the emission of N2O, an important greenhouse gas.

We are currently using N-cycling as model traits for bridging microbial community ecology, microbial processes and ecosystem functioning. For this purpose, both temporal and spatial patterns of microbial community activity, diversity and abundance are investigated.

More info: Laurent's Site 

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