INVESTIGATORS
Matthew Bowker, Lead PI
Northern Arizona University
Background: Matt Bowker is a community ecologist and restoration ecologist. He has focused on soil biota in dryland ecosystems throughout his career and readily admits an inordinate fondness for biocrusts since his first research project as an undergraduate. He is actively involved in development of methodologies to restore biocrusts to degraded ecosystems, drawing lessons from community ecology related to community assembly processes, alternate state and resilience concepts, and species interactions. He also views biocrusts as a useful model system to learn about ecological communities, and sees great potential in coordinated research to help biocrust research make the jump from parochial to global.
Project roles: Coordinate the network, oversee sample processing and data management at NAU
Contact: matthew.bowker@nau.edu
Anita Antoninka, co-PI
Northern Arizona University
Background: Anita Antoninka is an ecologist with emphasis on soils, interactions with primary producers, restoration and community interactions. A major research area is in the use of soil organisms, including biocrust, in restoration of degraded ecosystems. She has been involved in biocrust restoration research for the last 10 years, developing methods to cultivate, reinoculated and scale up efforts, with a focus on climate resilience.
Project roles: Project coordination
Contact: Anita.Antoninka@nau.edu
Javier Ceja Navarro, co-PI
Northern Arizona University
Background:
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Sasha Reed, co-PI
U.S. Geological Survey, Southwest Biological Science Center
Background:
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Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi, co-PI
University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Biological Sciences
Background: Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi is an ecosystem ecologist and soil biogeochemist. His laboratory's research focuses on belowground ecological processes using techniques such as gas exchange measurements, isotopic analyses, and chemical assays of laboratory and field experiments. His past work on biocrusts includes studying photosynthesis and C exchange in biocrusts as well as testing the fungal loop hypothesis for exchange of materials between plants and biocrusts via fungi.
Project roles: Process biocrust and soil samples at UTEP, webmaster. Analyses will include soil characteristics, elemental composition, and soil enzymatic function.
Contact: ajdarrouzetnardi@utep.edu
Sierra Jech, Postdoctoral Researcher
Northern Arizona University, Center for Ecosystem Science and Society
Background: Sierra Jech is a soil microbial ecologist. Her Ph.D. research at the University of Colorado focused on dryland restoration with biological soil crusts. Sierra is familiar with field and laboratory techniques for soil research, as well as computational methods for assessing soil microbial communities.
Project roles: Project coordination, install 10 nodes in North America, develop training materials for participants, laboratory work and computation for biocrust DNA samples
Contact: sierra.jech@nau.edu