Laura Podzikowski

I am broadly interested in how human activities are altering biogeochemical cycling on this planet.  However, to understand our impacts, there are fundamental questions in ecology that remain unanswered. For example, we still don’t have a clear understanding of how biodiversity mechanistically contributes to ecosystem functioning on multiple scales.  This makes it difficult to predict how realistic scenarios of species loss or addition might alter biogeochemical cycles.  For my PhD thesis I am exploring the links between mechanisms maintaining biodiversity in grassland systems and ecosystem function.  This work is part of a large biodiversity manipulation experiment taking place at the KU Field Station.