March 2022: Finally published the results of an epic collaboration with the University of Saskatchewan Computer Science, Plant Science, and Soil Science, plus Agriculture and Agrifood Canada. Plant selection pressures and the root-assocatied microbiome: who, what, and when matters when it comes to crop yields!
June 2021: Many late nights spent at the cyclotron at the UofS have finally paid off. Read more here about using genomic and radiochemical approaches to improve hydrocarbon remediation in the North!
May 2021: Juha Metsaranta pulled together data from years of carbon monitoring of the boreal forest in Saskatchewan, which included some unpublished data from my PDF with Dr. Jill Johnstone and Dr. Jay Maillet's PhD work. You can see the results of Juha's monumental effort here. The gist? Some tree species are more reliable than others for estimating carbon flux.
November 2020: Shallow soils are warmer under trees and tall shrubs across the permafrost region. Check out this synthesis skillfully led by Dr. Heather Kropphere.
October 2020: Treeline to treeline research involving black spruce led by @DoctorSpruce. Find out about the north versus south range responses of this widespread species recently out in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research.
September 2020: The outside in of plant and soil mechanistic processes using positron imaging. Here is the fascinating history led by Dr. Michael Schmidt with lots of pretty pictures, published in Molecular Imaging here.
April 2020: Ecological legacies of subarctic tree islands—what does this mean for tree range limits under climatic change? To find answers to this question and more about this work published by three generations of arctic researchers led by Owen Fitzpatrick in Ecosystems, have a read here.
February 2020: Geomorphologic‐plant‐microbe interactions lead to increased polysaccharides in high-arctic frost boils. Could this have important implications for biogeochemical cycling in the Arctic? Have a read of this research led by U of S PhD student Mitsuaki Ota here.
December 2019: Small plant genetic differences cause predictable changes in canola microbiome and are potential target for direct and indirect selection within breeding programs. Want to know more? Have a look at the paper here.
November 2019: Predictions of climate-driven vegetation response derived solely from remotely sensed data may not be reliable, at least in central Canada where shrubs are often misclassified as trees. See the full paper here to get the full story.
March 2019: Our latest paper on unearthing ecologically important microbes in a smooth brome-invaded grassland is out! Don't have time to read the whole thing? Check out the Nature Research Microbiology blog post here.
January 2019: Altitudinal losers and latitudinal winners when it comes to Larix range limits and environmental change. Check out our latest paper in Journal of Biogeography!
October 2018: Here's the latest paper out of the Siciliano lab by PhD student Katie Hyde. If you're interested in soil sampling and reproducibility in contaminated site remediation—click below to read on!
August 2018: Interested in ecosystem influences on permafrost dynamics? Check out our review led by Dr. Michael Loranty at Colgate University. Click the image below for a link to the article!
July 2018: Check out this synthesis work led by Dr. Carissa Brown at Memorial University. Predispersal constraints introduce lags into tree range expansion in the North. Coniferous trees along the North Canol produce a lot of non-viable seed, meaning treeline there is stagnant. Click the pic below for a link to the article!
July 2018: Just out! One of the first papers to come out of our Global Treeline Range Expansion Experiment (GTREE; learn more at www.treelineresearch.com) led by Dr. Esther Frei at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research. Click the image below to learn more about seed provenance and disturbance effects on treeline in Davos, Switzerland!
Jan 2018: Recently published work in ES&T on differentiating P and C fluxes in a benzene-degrading consortium using P18O4 stable isotope probing. Check out the link on the publication page for more info!