Dan Petticord, PhD Candidate & NSF Graduate Research Fellow

An Overview of Motivating Research Questions

How might changes in belowground processes be reflected in aboveground communities?

Are inter-community interactions driven by core players or holistic whole-community patterns?

What is the influence of plant and microbial communities on nutrient cycling above and belowground?

How have we changed global biogeochemical cycling over the last 100 years?

How do plants interact with the hidden world of soil?

What is the utility of the Root Economic Spectrum (and other like tools) for predicting the response of plant communities to global soil change?

What is the soil microbiome?

Are there governing rules in plant-soil interactions which are consistent across biomes?

How might we mitigate the legacy influences of historical agricultural practices?

What lessons from the past might inform Best Management Practices (BMP) as we industrialize tropical agriculture?

How have the changes we’ve brought upon the environment brought commensurate change on our lives?

What does a ‘sustainable’ future look like?

My Interests