I Am Striving: Sharon Billings

Sharon Billings is an ecosystem scientist who studies how Earth's terrestrial ecosystems—forests and grasslands—help to regulate the planet's climate. See the short video and the Billings Lab website.

Sharon has multiple studies going with different collaborators. A number of these studies come back to land use change and associated ecosystem shifts, particularly in the deep soil. Here are some of the questions she’s working on:

• the ways that pools of deep soil carbon are changing as a result of woody encroachment into grasslands;
• how soil structure dictates the way available moisture flows through the soil to recharge soil water and eventually the aquifer;
• the ways human land use choices are changing the flow of water as soil structure changes, and how water and acids produced by roots and microbes result in the flow of these solutions into streams and groundwater.