Our geo-science and environmental science students hail from a wide range of institutions and disciplines. All are interested in scientific research and are participating in our study of biogeochemical processes in northern upland and wetland ecosystems.
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Haley Dunleavy Alaska Pacific University Environmental Science major Born and raised in the city of Chicago, I currently study at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, majoring in Environmental Science with a concentration in Biological Science and minoring in Mathematics. I am extremely interested in plant-soil interactions in Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems, particularly with regards to shrub expansion. Luckily, my project with NERU is right up that alley! With Serita Frey as my mentor, we will be characterizing ectomycorrhizal fungal community compositional and functional differences along a heath-shrub-forest ecotone to attempt to understand how these communities and their roles will change as a warming and shifting climate causes shrubs and trees to encroach into the tundra. To do so, we will collect ectomycorrhizal root tips, run enzyme assays, and extract and sequence the fungal DNA. We will also carry out some soil analyses such as macro- and micro-nutrient concentration and soil respiration, which I am stoked to learn how to do!
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