Research interests

I am a plant and ecosystem ecologist, focusing on plant-nutrient-soil interactions in high latitude ecosystems. I am interested in how plants respond to climate-induced environmental change in arctic ecosystems, and the interactions between plants, microorganisms and nutrient cycling.

My research focuses on the patterns of plant nutrient uptake, carbon and nitrogen cycling, and resource partitioning in relation to newly released nutrients from deep-soil permafrost thaw and surface-soil decomposition. I explore the linkages between plant-plant and plant-microbe competition for nutrients, plant species community composition, belowground ecosystem processes, and ecosystem-atmosphere dynamics – vertically within the soil profile, laterally across the landscape, and temporally through seasonal and multi-year studies.

My work is fieldwork-based, where I use a combination of methods, including field manipulation experiments and in situ stable isotope labeling to follow the ecological processes directly as they occur in the arctic environment.

Teaching and supervising

Courses

Almen Økologi (Introduction to Ecology), BSc level, University of Copenhagen, spring 2020

Fjällekologi (Mountain Ecology), BSc level, Umeå University, summer 2017

Supervised MSc students

Joseph Gaudard, graduated July 2019: Carbon ecosystem-atmosphere exchange in arctic tundra in response to environmental changes

Maj Sofie Paornak Christensen, graduated March 2021: Dynamics of plant nutrient uptake and allocation in a mesic dwarf shrub heath ecosystem on Disko Island, Western Greenland

Simone Windfeldt-Schmidt, graduated March 2021: The effects of enhanced precipitation and phosphorus addition on carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in heath tundra in Greenland

Conference presentations

The Copenhagen Symposium on Arctic Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics, Copenhagen, Denmark (online), March 2021: Poster presentation, Multi-year plant uptake of permafrost-released nitrogen along an arctic hillslope

4th conference of the Nordic Society Oikos, Reykjavik, Iceland, March 2020: Foraging deeply: depth-specific plant nitrogen uptake in a high arctic permafrost ecosystem

19th International Tundra Experiment Meeting, Parma, Italy, Sept. 2019: Plant competition for nutrients in a phosphorus-limited tundra ecosystem

Keywords

Plant nutrient uptake, Climate change, Arctic, Tundra, Environmental change, Nitrogen cycling, Carbon cycling, Stable isotope labelling, ¹⁵N, ¹³C, Permafrost thaw, Resource partitioning, Plant species composition, Plant-plant competition, Plant-microbe interaction, Plant community change