Melissa Cregger

Major Research Interest

My research focuses on understanding how atmospheric and climatic changes, such as a change in precipitation, alter soil communities and how these changes might feedback to alter the distribution of plants. I am currently taking advantage of an ongoing precipitation experiment in a piñon-juniper woodland at the Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in central New Mexico. In 2007, 12 plots (each 40 m2) were established in a PJ-woodland. The precipitation treatments consist of a drought treatment (50% reduction, n = 3 plots), an increase precipitation treatment (50% increase, n = 3 plots), a cover control (n = 3 plots), and an unmanipulated control (n = 3 plots).  I will use a suite of molecular and ecosystem methods to address two questions:

• Question 1) Do changes in precipitation alter soil bacterial and fungal community structure and function in a piñon-juniper woodland?
•  Question 2) Do changes in the soil community alter the ability of piñon and juniper to re-colonize a habitat after drought?

 

Contact Information

Melissa Cregger
Graduate Student
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-1610

Email: mcregger@utk.edu