An article from my days as a Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) Scholar at The University of Georgia has been published in Ecology. Working under Dr. Nina Wurzburger at the Odum School of Ecology, I was part of a team investigating the global carbon cycle and ways that different plant and fungal communities could impact the storage of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in our soils. It is an honor and a joy to see the work published, after I was part of the team that created the original research design. I personally undertook the first two years of field work and laboratory analysis, but the rest of the team continued for many years after I left the program and it is wonderful to see that hard work paying off. I hope that this work sparks conversation about how poorly the scientific community understands the hidden world of decomposers and soil lifeforms, and how imperative it is to learn more as these biota are the lynch pin in a cycle that literally controls global climate change.
Our partner laboratory from this project, the Lankau lab at University of Wisconsin- Madison, has also continued work on the investigation of mycorrhizal fungi and how they relate to forests' ability to respond to climate change.
In the Spring of 2022, my Master's Thesis project was recognized by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at The University of Georgia as an outstanding research project. My work focused on quantifying the risk of climate change causing the release of hazardous materials from industrial or contaminated sites in Glynn County, GA. I also worked with residents in an analysis of the distribution of this risk among community members and an economic analysis demonstrating that the risk was not capitalized in the county's property markets.
In 2023, this same research project was selected as the UGA Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics nominee for the annual Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Outstanding Masters Thesis Award. While the project was not the recipient of this prestigious national award, it was an honor to be the college nominee.
These are some of my recent projects, where I have partnered with organizations of all sizes and types to advance environmental stewardship, economic growth, and social equity.
As a volunteer judge at the 2023 Envirothon, I worked with teams of high school students, evaluating their proposals for ways to adapt to and mitigate continued climate change in Wisconsin.
Using econometric modeling of property markets, I helped local government officials to understand residents' awareness of environmental risks in their communities and the economic impacts of those risks.
In my Master's thesis project I worked as a resilience consultant and analyst for under-served populations in Glynn County, GA who face heightened risk from climate change and toxic chemicals in their communities.
I took a local green-tech startup company from start to finish of the B-Corporation Certification process. The company, CIRT, is now officially making business a force for good.
This research uncovered previously overlooked aspects of the global carbon cycle. Our team demonstrated that the species of fungi in symbiotic relationships with forest trees can influence the degree to which the land is a carbon sink.
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