Katie Hettinga
Research Assistant
My research focuses on carbon cycling in peatlands, as these sensitive ecosystems store around 33% of the terrestrial carbon pool, despite occupying only 3% of total land area. For my undergraduate thesis I looked at how peatland microbial communities respond to disturbance by way of mineral dusts. As climate change creates increasingly arid conditions, airborne mineral dusts traveling to sensitive ecosystems will become a more severe threat.