Research questions and approaches can be tailored based on the student’s interests, but should be relavent to one of these three broad topics:

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1. Subsurface impacts of land-use/cover change in grasslands and savannas - Woody plant encroachment, conversion to row-crop agriculture, and changes in land management practices (grazing, fire, etc.) in grasslands can have massive impacts on rooting dynamics, soil structure and, ultimately, subsurface water movement and storage. We are interested in how changes in plant cover alter the structure of the subsurface in ways that impacts water fluxes.

2. Plant water-use strategies and coexistence in water-limited ecosystems - Water is a key resource shaping interactions among plant species and functional groups, particularly during drought and other climate extremes. We are interested in how differences in rooting depth, water-use strategies, and access to subsurface water resources influence competition and coexistence among functional groups, and how these interactions ultimately affect ecosystem resilience.

3. Drivers and consequences of soil water preferential flow - Preferential flow (the rapid movement of water through macropores) causes large amounts of water to bypass the broader soil matrix and has important consequences for nutrient / pollutant / sediment fluxes and soil biogeochemical processes. We are interested in how rooting architecture interacts with rainfall characteristics to influence the location and timing of preferential flow.