Our research interests... focus on the interactions between the environment and ecosystems (natural, restored and agroecosystems). We study these interactions at many levels of organization including cellular, organismal, ecosystem and global scales. Our research projects investigate how climate change affects plant and ecosystem functioning and how the observed effects feedback on the Earth's biogeochemical processes. Specifically, we concentrate on how cellular, plant and ecosystem respiration processes affect the global carbon cycle in an array of different experimental set ups using stable isotopes. Our projects taken together investigate many disciplines including plant physiology and biochemistry, ecosystem ecology, restoration ecology, biogeochemistry, water quality, or paleoecology/climate reconstruction.

We now have a new focus for the inclusion of market-based strategies for ecological restoration of grasslands and wetlands that arebased on ecosystem services related to cope and mitigate the effects of land use and climate change. We use stable isotopes to integrate all these disciplines and all levels of organization.

NEWS:

Our grassland Ameriflux site finished year 3 of operation (press release)

Summer Institutes partnership with the Nature Museum and Chicago Public Schools are providing exciting results as hands-on science currivulum is resulting in improvements in reading, writinga and arithmetics. To learn about the program ypou can check the press release, the story on 848 WBEZ Chicago public radio aired on August 3rd, the report on Chicago Journal or the story on Peoria Journal Star. We are currently in cycle III of the program.

Three new postdoctoral associates have joined the laboratory in Fall 2007.

Two students, Sarah O'brien and Charlie Flower, have earned DOE and NSF predoctoral fellowships.

Publication highlights:

DeLucia EH, John E. Drake, Richard B. Thomas, and Miquel Gonzalez-Meler (2007) Forest Carbon Use Efficiency: Is Respiration a Constant Fraction of Gross Primary Production? Global Change Biology, 13:1157-1167.

Taneva, Pippen, Schlesinger and Gonzalez-Meler (2006) Global Change Biology, (pdf)