Whendee Silver

About

Dr. Whendee Silver is a Professor of Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at U.C. Berkeley. She earned her PhD in Ecosystem Ecology from Yale University and also holds a Master of Science in Forest Science from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a B.I.S. in Environmental Studies from the School for International Training. Her research focuses on determining the biogeochemical effects of climate change and human impacts on the environment, with an emphasis on the potential for mitigation. Her current research program investigates the impacts of land-use practices such as deforestation, reforestation, and grazing on carbon dynamics and biogeochemical cycling, the retention and loss of carbon and nitrogen under variable redox conditions, and the effects of water and agricultural management on greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Silver leads the Silver Lab, which works on projects including drought and hurricane impacts on tropical forests, climate change mitigation potential of grasslands, and greenhouse gas dynamics of peatlands and wetlands. She is the lead scientist of the Marin Carbon Project, which explores land-based climate change mitigation strategies, particularly through composting high-emission organic waste for soil amendments to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide. Recognized for her contributions, she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the…

Research topics

• Ecology
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Environmental science
• Data Mining
• Database
• Environmental resource management
• Chemistry
• Soil science
• Meteorology

Selected publications

• COSORE: A community database for continuous soil respiration and other soil‐atmosphere greenhouse gas flux data

  Global Change Biology · 2020 · 100 citations

  , the database design accommodates other soil-atmosphere measurements (e.g. ecosystem respiration, chamber-measured net ecosystem exchange, methane fluxes) as well as experimental treatments (heterotrophic only, etc.). We give brief examples of the types of analyses possible using this new community resource and describe its accompanying R software package.

  DOI

• The role of soil in the contribution of food and feed

  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2021-08-04 · 95 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Soils play a critical role in the production of food and feed for a growing global population. Here, we review global patterns in soil characteristics, agricultural production and the fate of embedded soil nutrients. Nitrogen- and organic-rich soils supported the highest crop yields, yet the efficiency of nutrient utilization was concentrated in regions with lower crop productivity and lower rates of chemical fertilizer inputs. Globally, soil resources were concentrated in animal feed, resulting…

  PublisherDOI

• Productive wetlands restored for carbon sequestration quickly become net CO2 sinks with site-level factors driving uptake variability

  PLoS ONE · 2021-03-25 · 90 citations

  articleOpen access

  Inundated wetlands can potentially sequester substantial amounts of soil carbon (C) over the long-term because of slow decomposition and high primary productivity, particularly in climates with long growing seasons. Restoring such wetlands may provide one of several effective negative emission technologies to remove atmospheric CO2 and mitigate climate change. However, there remains considerable uncertainty whether these heterogeneous ecotones are consistent net C sinks and to what degree restor…

  PublisherDOI

• Soil organic carbon is not just for soil scientists: measurement recommendations for diverse practitioners

  Ecological Applications · 2021 · 73 citations

  Soil organic carbon (SOC) regulates terrestrial ecosystem functioning, provides diverse energy sources for soil microorganisms, governs soil structure, and regulates the availability of organically bound nutrients. Investigators in increasingly diverse disciplines recognize how quantifying SOC attributes can provide insight about ecological states and processes. Today, multiple research networks collect and provide SOC data, and robust, new technologies are available for managing, sharing, and a…

  DOI

• A Research Framework to Integrate Cross-Ecosystem Responses to Tropical Cyclones

  BioScience · 2020 · 58 citations

  Abstract Tropical cyclones play an increasingly important role in shaping ecosystems. Understanding and generalizing their responses is challenging because of meteorological variability among storms and its interaction with ecosystems. We present a research framework designed to compare tropical cyclone effects within and across ecosystems that: a) uses a disaggregating approach that measures the responses of individual ecosystem components, b) links the response of ecosystem components at fine…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: The Role of Iron Redox Dynamics in Carbon Losses from Tropical Forest Soils

  NSF · $711k · 2015–2021

• Dissertation Research: Iron redox dynamics as a driver of organic matter decomposition in humid tropical forest soils

  NSF · $15k · 2012–2014

• Collaborative Research: Feammox - A new pathway for nitrogen loss from terrestrial ecosystems

  NSF · $742k · 2009–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Christine S. O’Connell

  Macalester College

  103 shared

• Debjani Sihi

  Emory University

  89 shared

• Melanie A. Mayes

  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  88 shared

• C. López-Lloreda

  86 shared

• Ryan K. Quinn

  85 shared

• Brent D. Newman

  84 shared

• Jana R. Phillips

  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  84 shared

• Julia Brenner

  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  84 shared

Education

• PhD, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

  Yale University

  1992

Awards & honors

• Innovation Prize by the American Carbon Registry (2015)
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sc…
• Fellow of the American Geophysical Union
• Fellow of the Ecological Society of America
• Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Allen Goldsteinh-129
• Todd Dawsonh-100
• Trevor Keenanh-85