Food

To ensure sustainable and safe food production, we study nutrient-contaminant cycling, carbon storage, and greenhouse gas production in agricultural soils. Spanning across cropland and rangeland, we study the ecosystem services from sustainable management including cover cropping, compost application, and grazing.  We examine management strategies to limit greenhouse gas production, including looking at alternatives to fossil fuel derived fertilizers including organic amendments and circular nutrient approaches. One overarching objective is to evaluate land management decisions with the aim to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and reduce water pollution. We are interested in the intersection between food production, soil health, and human health, while conducting both fundamental inquiry and policy-informed research to address relevant knowledge gaps. Working directly with community partners, including commercial and city composters, farm managers, ranchers, and USDA-ARS scientists, we are particularly interested in working with communities most impacted by climate change, food insecurity, and environmental pollution. We aim to reduce equity deficits within agriculture while making our research digestible and adoptable for farmers, land managers, and agriculturalists through presenting at local extension meetings and through Youtube videos.

Our research areas include:

1. Understanding nutrient release patterns from compost plus (urine recovered) conventional fertilizers
2. Reducing groundwater nitrate leaching in agricultural soils with fall or winter cover cropping
3. Advancing scalable methane mitigation in rice
4. Building soil health and promoting carbon storage in rangelands