Earth Sciences professor Dr. Lisa Kellman and her research is featured in the new issue of Innovation Canada. She appears along side feature writers David Suzuki from the Nature of Things and Bob MacDonald from Quirks and Quarks.
Dr. Kellman, StFX's Canada Research Chair in Environmental Sciences, looks at biogeochemical cycling in Atlantic Canada's forests in order to measure greenhouse gas emissions and to relate them to changes in forest management practices and soil physical properties.
Dr. Kellman, her colleagues and students, focus on the soil, cycling of carbon and nitrogen, temperature, and other decomposition controls. It tells them if and how human activities alter the exchanges of gases between soils and the atmosphere.
Her research is ongoing and will continue through to 2009 with funding from ACOA. It has provided funding for graduate students and has allowed StFX undergraduates opportunities to be involved in research-related activities in the environmental sciences.
This project provides an excellent example of an interdisciplinary scientific approach to understanding and quantifying how human activities alter Earth's biogeochemical and climate systems, said Dr. Kellman.