Agroecology Lab
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Jeroen GillabelPh.D. student
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EDUCATION
Ph.D. training in Applied Biosciences and Engineering, at Dept. of Land Management and Economics, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, KULeuven, Belgium. (in progress)
Master in Applied Biosciences and Engineering, environmental technology (Bio-engineer in environmental technology). 2005.
Minor: Soil Science and Land Use. At K.U.Leuven, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering. Successful with great distinction.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Being interested in soil science in general, and realizing that climate change is one of the most urgent and threatening dangers our earth system is facing, my major scientific interest centers around the crucial role soils play in the regulation of the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas budget. Annual fluxes of CO2 between the soil and the atmosphere are estimated to be 10 times as large as annual carbon (C) emissions due to combustion of fossil fuels, which implies that even a small deviation from the equilibrium of CO2 fluxes in and out of the soil has profound consequences for the greenhouse gas budget, and hence for the climatic system.
Within this general context, my main interest lies in investigating how the large amounts of C currently stored in the soil as soil organic matter (SOM) will respond to a warmer climate. Will this huge stock of SOM (2 times the amount of C present in the atmosphere is currently held within the soil) serve as a positive feedback to climatic change due to increased decomposition rates, or will increases in SOM production upon increased plant production due to higher temperatures and CO2 concentrations instead lead to a mitigation of rising CO2 levels? Since trying to answer this question within a four year research program would be too ambitious, I will focus my research on elaborating the mechanisms regulating the temperature dependency of SOM decomposition throughout the soil profile, which is a small but important part of the global cycling of C as influenced by climatic changes.
Further interests are in the effects of land use management on soil C cycling and the interaction with soil structure dynamics, the vertical variability of C dynamics and the role of erosion herein, and ecosystem modeling as a tool to simplify the soil’s complexity.
Projects