UC Berkeley

I investigated the impact of anthropogenic disturbances on wetland soil response from two different geographies: a burned subalpine wetland in Wyoming, and three wetland sites comprising a salinity gradient in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. To achieve this, I carried out experiments of increasing complexity, beginning from simple slurry-based experiments to sophisticated flow-through reactor experiments. I simulated disturbance events; namely monthly temperature variations in chapter 1, increased nitrate loadings and salinity concentrations in chapters 2 and 3 and altered root exudate regimes using model compounds in chapter 4. Through my work, I was able to report the effects of both changing porewater/soil chemistry and plant inputs on greenhouse gas emissions and dissolved carbon fluxes.