RESEARCH

Our lab studies how global change drivers, such as increasing aridity, changes to precipitation patterns, and intensifying land use, influence plants, soil microbes, and biocrust communities, mainly in dryland ecosystems. We are deeply interested in the feedbacks between ecosystem structure and critical ecosystem functions, such as soil fertility, soil stability, and biogeochemical cycling.

By understanding the mechanisms underpinning ecological change, we aim to develop solutions-driven restoration strategies, land management actions, and policy frameworks to increase resistant and resilience of global drylands.

Global change and dryland ecosystem function

Our lab investigates how global change alters interactions among plants, soil microbes, and biocrusts, and how these shifts affect nutrient cycling and ecosystem function across drylands. We study these dynamics across multiple spatial scales, from how resource availability and temperature fluctuations regulate soil respiration in bare intercanopy spaces, to how plant canopies, soil carbon and nitrogen pools, and aridity gradients structure interactions among vegetation, microbial communities, and biocrusts. To uncover the mechanisms driving these ecological patterns, we use an integrative toolkit that includes stable isotope probing, ecological stoichiometry, genomic approaches, and spatially explicit field studies.

Ecological thresholds, transitions, and restoration

Global change can push dryland ecosystems across ecological thresholds, reshaping community composition, resource availability, and the processes that sustain ecosystem function. Building on our work in soil and biocrust ecology, we study how changes in plants, soil microbes, and biocrusts drive degradation, reduce soil stability, and alter ecosystem resistance and resilience.

By identifying the mechanisms behind these transitions, we aim to develop restoration strategies tailored to dryland systems. In particular, we are interested in how biocrusts and associated soil microbial communities can support recovery, stabilize soils, and restore ecosystem function.

Dryland vulnerability, erosion, and dust mitigation

Building on our work on ecosystem function and ecological transitions, our lab examines how these changes scale up to shape dryland vulnerability to land degradation, erosion, and sand and dust storms. By integrating remote sensing, field ecology, and wind-erosion modeling, we identify where landscapes are most at risk of soil loss, ecological transition, and declining stability under global change. This work helps clarify how shifts in vegetation, biocrust cover, and soil surface conditions influence erosion risk and dust movement across dryland regions.

Collaborate With Us

Located at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, our lab is committed to advancing ecosystem resistance and resilience—especially during the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration and the UN Decade on Combating Sand and Dust Storms. We collaborate extensively with researchers locally, nationally, and internationally across different ecosystem types to push forward ecology and restoration theory.

Join the Lab: We are always excited to connect with prospective undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. Contact us to learn more about current opportunities: kristina.young@wisc.edu