If this is the first time you've seen the phrase 'environmental justice' I can promise you it won't be the last. Although my academic career narrowly focuses on soil science, once I learned a bit of political ecology and place-based history I found myself obsessed with the concept of environmental justice. This is an obsession that will hopefully be intertwined in my future career, so here's my very basic understanding of what I've learned thus far.
I successfully defended my PhD, and had a lot of [type II] fun in the process. You can watch my presentation, look through my slides, and access my *draft* dissertation that still requires more edits before it's finalized. Enjoy.
I was riding bikes before I was digging holes, but the more holes I dug the more I liked mountain biking. I was interviewed by a science journalist who like mountain biking and wanted to learn a bit about soil. Especially that sweet sweet loam.
I grew up along California’s San Juaquin Delta within sight of plenty of windmills, cornfields, a Chevron oil refinery, and a gas power plant. Luckily, I had parents who thought it was cool to hike miles into the Sierra Nevada mountains, poop in holes you frantically dug, and sleep on the ground for fun!
I've been a co-host of this radio show & podcast show in 2015. Each on-air interview is preceded with a written blog post advertising my fellow graduate students. This is a brief overview of some of them.
The NEON project was at its infancy when I began my dissertation. They were literally building and installing the ~30 sites around North America at the same time they were sampling soils for my project. Although my PhD focuses on the soils aspect, there is a wealth of publicly available data being generated that any scientist should be aware of.
Ever wanted to see how perfectly square a 1x1x1 meter cube you could dig? Well neither have I! But it turns out, ecosystem-level carbon accounting require very precise partitioning of biomass pools to be effective.
Forest management has strong effects on the landscapes, but what happens to soil carbon - and therefore site productivity - following intensive biomass harvesting?
Doing the research is *never* as fun as talking about it. This radio show & podcast is for and by graduate students at OSU so we can all stay curious about the world around us.