Sharon Billings
University of Kansas, KS·Earth & Environmental Science
Beneath every forest and grassland, plant roots, soil and bedrock work together to control where rainwater goes and how much carbon stays underground. These processes affect the climate by changing levels of greenhouse gases such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, and human activity can alter them.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
critical zone
regolith
bedrock weathering
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Determine when and how strongly bedrock, compared with plant roots, controls water and carbon movement between land and atmosphere, using new field data and existing Critical Zone, NEON and LTER datasets.
- Identify how bedrock type and fractures create preferred water flow paths and shape root water uptake, using 3D geophysical surveys and analyses of soil pore structure.
- Integrate global field and satellite data with machine learning and numerical models to reveal large-scale subsurface patterns and forecast how climate shapes water flow and the carbon cycle.
More about the research
This collaborative project across seven universities asks how roots, regolith (loose rock and soil above bedrock), rock and climate interact over decades to centuries.
Why it matters
Forecasting how water and carbon move between land and air helps predict how climate change and human land use will affect water supplies, carbon storage and the greenhouse gas balance. A framework linking roots, bedrock and climate could improve the Earth system models that land managers and climate planners rely on.
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.
Daniella Rempe
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test whether slow refilling of deep subsurface moisture, rather than lasting tree physiological damage, explains why forest growth and streamflow stay suppressed after drought ends, using a multiyear deep-moisture record spanning before, during, and after a drought.
Kathleen Treseder
University of California-Irvine, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether soil fungi and bacteria adapt to extreme warming more effectively when they interact with the natural microbial community, through field evolution experiments spanning thousands of generations.
The school
University of Kansas: 26 labs on PI Pages, $546M a year on research, 351 research doctorates a year.
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