Cooling Off: Winter '20

After finishing a second term at Dartmouth, my graduate research is starting to take shape. Academically, I took a single statistics course and didn’t have any TA duties this term. I spent the first six weeks of the term wrangling data in R for an ESA poster abstract submission. The data was from the Soil Warming and Nitrogen Addition (SWaN) experiment at the Harvard Forest that I helped collect for most of 2019. The site is special because it consists of heated plots, nitrogen enrichment, and gas wells that are installed from the OA horizon down to 50 cm below the soil organic layer. The design allows us to capture seasonal and depthwise variation in soil respiration under conditions that are predicted as a result of climate change. I used carbon dioxide and oxygen measurements from the gas wells to calculate seasonal apparent respiration quotients (ARQs) for each of the treatments and by depth in the soil profile. ARQs help detect changes in the dominant respiration pathway of the soil which is contributed to by growing roots and microbes. While acceptance to the ESA conference is pending, I’m eager to travel to Salt Lake City this August and engage with others who are interested in looking at these patterns more critically.

Soil moisture is known to affect soil respiration because of its control on oxygen availability and I’m keen on pairing it with a reduction-oxidation (redox) potential measurement. Redox reactions are what drive all metabolic pathways, so examining the response of redox potential to precipitation events and soil drying will connect soil respiration change to soil hydrology. The forest soil hydrology and carbon cycling project proposal, that I had written as the last assignment for the Soils, Forests, and Food course that I took in the fall, detailed the launch plan of a redox potential monitoring network in the forests of the northeast US. Thanks to this planning, I began meeting with Dave Lutz, a research professor that I hope to have on my committee, this winter and we intend to field test homemade sensors at the Dartmouth organic farm this spring.

I’m proud to share that I made more time for wellness practices in my free time which helped me stay in a clearer mental state than I was in during the last term. I joined a local hot yoga and pilates studio called Be You Upper Valley and got my hands on a pair of thrift skis and boots for hitting the slopes in northern Vermont. I’m full of hope for my work and life here at Dartmouth as I continue to settle into the community. I thank you all for reading and I hope you stay tuned.

- Geni G.