…to biocrusts, cattle cams, K-12 education, and rodent community dyanmics – Sala Lab learns all about what is happening at the Jornada Basin LTER! From July 10-13, the 9 Sala Lab members attended the 2017 Jornada LTER meeting to learn all about ongoing research in the basin. This symposium engaged attendees from 6+ universities with over 30 talks, a field trip…
Luis Weber, a second year Environmental Life Sciences PhD student in the Sala lab, is in his second field season at the Jornada LTER. Luis’ research is a part of the USDA-AFRI project focusing on exotic grass and woody plant encroachment. Specifically, Luis focuses on the seedling establishment phase by asking “How do precipitation and herbivory interact to influence the probability…
We are celebrating a fresh look for our new website with some updates from the field! Summer field season 2017 has kicked off already, starting April 2017, at the Konza Prairie LTER. The Konza Prairie serves as our mesic site for our Above/Belowground Partitioning project. With over 150 plots among three sites, graduate and undergraduate students along with our post-doc and techinician…
Congratulations to Laureano Gherardi on his recently published paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences! Check out his paper on the effects of precipitation variability on grass- and shrub-productivity. Most studies on climate change impact focus on the effects of changes in the amount of precipitation in a system, overlooking the effects of interannual variability in precipitation. This 6-year study…
Welcome Aaron Boydston and Courtney Currier to the Sala Lab. Aaron, a new Master’s student, and Courtney, the new research technician, both joined our lab this fall. Aaron’s research will focus on how proper grazing management can increase carbon storage in semi-arid grassland soils. During the month of October, Courtney was introduced to the Sala Lab field sites, including the Jornada LTER in the…