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The role of N2-fixing plants and bio­di­ver­sity in the trop­i­cal car­bon sink

Sarah Batterman

Sarah Bat­ter­man stud­ies nutri­ent and car­bon cycling in ter­res­trial ecosys­tems, and is inter­ested in how ecosys­tem pat­terns emerge from the prop­er­ties of indi­vid­ual trees. Her Ph.D. research focused on sym­bi­otic dini­tro­gen fix­a­tion in trop­i­cal forests. It found that nitro­gen fix­a­tion can be con­strained by an inter­ac­tion of nitro­gen and phos­pho­rus in the soil, and that fix­a­tion sup­plies a large frac­tion of the nitro­gen needed to sup­port the car­bon sink in young forests recov­er­ing from dis­tur­bance. Her results show that indi­vid­ual trees and species dif­fer in their nutri­ent strate­gies and in the tim­ing of their con­tri­bu­tions of nitro­gen fix­a­tion to the ecosys­tem dur­ing sec­ondary suc­ces­sion. These find­ings sug­gest that bio­di­ver­sity is impor­tant for the func­tion of fix­a­tion and for the car­bon sink in trop­i­cal forests. Sarah con­tin­ues to study fix­a­tion in the tropics.

 

Wednesday, 01/28/15

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Barrows Hall, Rm 110

UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720