Goutham Thotakuri is a graduate student in the Kravchenko lab at Michigan State University. His research is focused on the study of carbon transfer between various cover crop species and soil carbon sequestration. Recent changes to our climate dynamics have brought on alarming drought conditions in many parts of the world. Since we cannot control the climate, we need to prepare our agricultural systems for adversity. One way to do this is through understanding the soil's hydro-physical and biochemical processes. We can identify critical factors influencing drought resilience by
Mapping the soil aggregate highway: Reflections from an LTER fellow
Each year the KBS LTER program awards two graduate students with summer research fellowships. Here Michelle Quigley describes the research her 2015 summer fellowship supported. Michelle is a Ph.D. student in Sasha Kravchenko's lab at Michigan State University. When most people think of studying soils in agricultural systems, they picture someone out in a field taking soil samples or surveying crops or in a lab running samples. That is fairly typical for most soil scientists. However, while I do get out in the field, most of my time is spent staring at a computer screen. Carbon is