Lancaster Environment Centre

My research interests are focused on the effects of land use and climate change on soil biodiversity, and subsequently on the effects of changes in soil biodiversity on ecosystem processes. I am particularly interested in how plants and soil microbial communities interact under these changing circumstances, and how this influences ecosystem processes like nutrient and carbon cycling. Also, I am getting more and more interested in more fundamental questions, like how plants shape their environment and how this feeds back to the plant community.

I finished my PhD at Wageningen University and Alterra, the Netherlands in February 2009. Now I work as a post doc with Richard Bardgett in the EU 7th framework project Soilservice, which is about the importance of soil biodiversity for ecosystem services, and about valuing these ecosystem services.