Serita Frey
University of New Hampshire, NH·Earth & Environmental Science
Soil holds more carbon than any other part of the land surface, locked up in dead plant and microbial material called organic matter. Microbes slowly break that material down and release carbon dioxide, and they do it faster when it is warmer.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
soil carbon
soil warming
soil organic matter
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Test whether decades of soil warming produce cycles of organic matter decay punctuated by shifts in the soil microbial community, continuing core measurements across Harvard Forest plots warmed 5 degrees Celsius for 13, 16 and 28 years.
- Determine why the soil respiration response to warming has been non-linear over time, using temperature manipulations both in the field and on soils incubated under controlled laboratory conditions.
- Measure soil organic matter chemistry alongside microbial community structure and function to test whether long-term warming unlocks decay of recalcitrant soil carbon that normally resists breakdown.
- Quantify nitrogen mineralization and above-ground tree carbon storage to test whether sustained warming keeps accelerating the nitrogen cycle and stimulates carbon accumulation in trees, and feed the results into trait-based microbial and ecosystem models.
More about the research
That sets up a worrying loop: a warming climate speeds decomposition, which releases more carbon, which warms the climate further. How strong that loop is depends on mechanisms that are still poorly understood, particularly whether the response fades, holds steady, or accelerates over decades. This project measures it directly, using soils that have been deliberately heated in the forest floor for nearly thirty years.
Why it matters
How much carbon soils release as the planet warms is one of the larger uncertainties in projections of future climate. Decades of continuous warming data from a single forest can show whether the soil carbon feedback strengthens or weakens over time and whether gains in tree carbon storage offset soil losses, information that directly constrains the terrestrial ecosystem models used to forecast climate change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Steven Hall
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether variation in soil organic matter properties and cycling across U.S. ecosystems can be explained by three fundamental axes running from fast to slow biogeochemical rates, using samples and data from NEON sites.
James Morris
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether salt marsh elevation gain is driven by belowground biomass production of Spartina alterniflora and scales with net ecosystem production, using long-term North Inlet measurements.
Natasja Van Gestel
Texas Tech University, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how experimental warming with open-top chambers changes net ecosystem carbon exchange along an Antarctic gradient from bare glacier soil to full plant cover, using field gas-exchange measurements.
The school
University of New Hampshire: 5 labs on PI Pages, $230M a year on research, 79 research doctorates a year.
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