Whendee Silver

Whendee Silver
Alma materPh.D. Yale University

M.F. Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

B.I.S. Environmental Studies School for International Training
AwardsFellow, Ecological Society of America

Innovation Award, American Carbon Registry

Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow
Scientific career
Fieldsecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry
Websitehttps://nature.berkeley.edu/silverlab/

Whendee Silver is an American ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist.[1][2]

Early life and education

Silver grew up in Southern California.[3] She earned her MS in Forest Science from Yale School of Forestry in 1987[4] and in 1992, received her PhD from Yale University.[4][2]

Career and research

Silver is a distinguished professor of ecosystem ecology at University of California, Berkeley.[5][2] With a focus on ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry, her research is often aimed at better understanding the soil system to mitigate the effects of climate change.[2] A significant portion of her work has focused on tropical ecosystems, their soils, plants,[6] and how nutrients and carbon cycle through them.

Silver is the lead scientist at the Marin Carbon Project, which she helped found in 2008. The Marin Carbon Project uses science to improve land management, to think about the whole system and thus consider and value ecosystem services such as soil's C sequestration ability, and make farm and ranch management more centered around carbon sequestration. Through this project she is working with ranchers, using compost for carbon sequestration on ranch land in California, greatly improving the soil's ability to sequester carbon.[7][8][5][9]

Awards and honors

  • Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, 2009.[10]
  • Google Science Communication Fellow, 2011.[11]
  • Innovation Award from the American Carbon Registry, 2015.[12]
  • UC Berkeley Faculty Climate Action Champion, 2015-2016.[13]
  • Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, 2016.[14]
  • ESPM Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, 2017
  • Fellow, American Geophysical Union, 2021[15]

Publications

Silver's research on the biogeochemistry of tropical plants has been published in multiple academic journals.[16][17][18][19] Silver's research was featured in the book Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants by Ulrich Lüttge.[20] Silver has over 145 publications as of 2018.

Selected publications

  • Mayer, A., Z. Hausfather, A. D. Jones, and W. L. Silver. 2018. The Potential of Agricultural Land Management to Contribute to Lower Global Surface Temperatures. Sciences Advances. In Press.[21]
  • O’Connell, C., L. Ruan, and W.L. Silver. 2018. Drought drives rapid shifts in tropical rainforest soil biogeochemistry and greenhouse gas emissions. Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03352-3.[22]
  • Yang, W.H., R. Ryals, D.F. Cusack, and W.L. Silver. 2017. Cross-biome assessment of gross soil nitrogen cycling in California ecosystems. Soil Biology and Biochemistry107:144-155.[23]
  • McNicol, G., C.S. Sturtevant, S.H. Knox, I. Dronova, D.D. Baldocchi, and W. L.Silver. 2017. Effects of seasonality, transport-pathway, and spatial structure on restored wetland greenhouse gas fluxes. Global Change Biology DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13580.[24]
  • Ryals, R., V. T. Eviner, C. Stein, K. N. Suding, and W. L. Silver. 2016. Managing for multiple ecosystem services: are there tradeoffs between carbon sequestration, plant production and plant diversity in grasslands amended with compost? Ecosphere doi: 10.1002/ecs2.1270.[25]
  • Hall, S. J., J. Treffkorn, and W. L. Silver. 2014. Breaking the enzymatic latch: Impacts of reducing conditions on hydrolytic enzyme activity in tropical forest soils. Ecology95: 2964-2973.[26]
  • Liptzin, D. and W. L. Silver. 2015. Spatial patterns in oxygen and redox sensitive biogeochemistry in tropical forest soils. Ecosphere6: 1-14.[27]
  • Silver, W. L., S. J. Hall, and G. González. 2014. Differential effects of canopy trimming and litter deposition on litterfall and nutrient dynamics in a wet subtropical forest. Forest Ecology and Management332: 47-55.[28]

References

  1. ^ Pilot, Otto (2015-02-13). "Down and Dirty". Climate One. Retrieved 2018-11-13.
  2. ^ a b c d Grasslands, Compost and Climate Change Mitigation: a Conversation with Whendee Silver, retrieved 2018-11-13
  3. ^ Pilot, Otto (2015-02-13). "Down and Dirty". Climate One. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  4. ^ a b "Managing Soil for Resilient Farmland". Lexicon of Food. 2015-06-04. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  5. ^ a b Velasquez-Manoff, Moises (18 April 2018). "Can Dirt Save the Earth?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  6. ^ Lüttge, Ulrich (2007-12-14). Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants. Vol. 44. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 301–328. doi:10.1007/bf00996995. ISBN 9783540717935. S2CID 94545902. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  7. ^ "To the rescue: Berkeley names Faculty Climate Action Champion". Berkeley News. 2015-09-29. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  8. ^ Velasquez-Manoff, Moises (18 April 2018). "Can Dirt Save the Earth?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  9. ^ "Just add compost: How to turn your grassland ranch into a carbon sink". Grist. 2014-01-16. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  10. ^ "Bohannan selected as Leopold Leadership Fellow | Environmental Studies Program". envs.uoregon.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  11. ^ "Google Announces 21 Ph.D. Scientists As 'Science Communication Fellows' » Yale Climate Connections". Yale Climate Connections. 2011-02-16. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  12. ^ "From Garbage to Gold: Managing California's Grasslands for Climate Change Mitigation — UC Center Sacramento". uccs.ucdavis.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  13. ^ "To the rescue: Berkeley names Faculty Climate Action Champion". Berkeley News. 2015-09-29. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  14. ^ "From Garbage to Gold: Managing California's Grasslands for Climate Change Mitigation — UC Center Sacramento". uccs.ucdavis.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  15. ^ "2021 Class of AGU Fellows Announced". Eos. 28 September 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-29.
  16. ^ Silver, Whendee L.; Lugo, A. E.; Keller, M. (March 1999). "Soil oxygen availability and biogeochemistry along rainfall and topographic gradients in upland wet tropical forest soils". Biogeochemistry. 44 (3): 301–328. doi:10.1007/bf00996995. ISSN 0168-2563. S2CID 94545902.
  17. ^ Cleveland, Cory C.; Townsend, Alan R.; Taylor, Philip; Alvarez-Clare, Silvia; Bustamante, Mercedes M. C.; Chuyong, George; Dobrowski, Solomon Z.; Grierson, Pauline; Harms, Kyle E. (2011-07-12). "Relationships among net primary productivity, nutrients and climate in tropical rain forest: a pan-tropical analysis". Ecology Letters. 14 (9): 939–947. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01658.x. ISSN 1461-023X. PMID 21749602.
  18. ^ Silver, Whendee L.; Thompson, Andrew W.; McGroddy, Megan E.; Varner, Ruth K.; Dias, Jadson D.; Silva, Hudson; Crill, Patrick M.; Keller, Michael (February 2005). "Fine root dynamics and trace gas fluxes in two lowland tropical forest soils". Global Change Biology. 11 (2): 290–306. Bibcode:2005GCBio..11..290S. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2005.00903.x. ISSN 1354-1013. S2CID 85253188.
  19. ^ CUSACK, DANIELA F.; CHOU, WENDY W.; YANG, WENDY H.; HARMON, MARK E.; SILVER, WHENDEE L. (May 2009). "Controls on long-term root and leaf litter decomposition in neotropical forests". Global Change Biology. 15 (5): 1339–1355. Bibcode:2009GCBio..15.1339C. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01781.x. ISSN 1354-1013. S2CID 39890498.
  20. ^ Lüttge, Ulrich (2007-12-14). Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9783540717935.
  21. ^ Mayer, Allegra; Hausfather, Zeke; Jones, Andrew D.; Silver, Whendee L. (2018-08-01). "The potential of agricultural land management to contribute to lower global surface temperatures". Science Advances. 4 (8): eaaq0932. Bibcode:2018SciA....4..932M. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaq0932. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 6114992. PMID 30167456.
  22. ^ O’Connell, Christine S.; Ruan, Leilei; Silver, Whendee L. (2018-04-09). "Drought drives rapid shifts in tropical rainforest soil biogeochemistry and greenhouse gas emissions". Nature Communications. 9 (1): 1348. Bibcode:2018NatCo...9.1348O. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03352-3. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 5890268. PMID 29632326.
  23. ^ Yang, Wendy; Ryals, Rebecca A.; Cusack, Daniela F.; Silver, Whendee L. (2017-04-01). "Cross-biome assessment of gross soil nitrogen cycling in California ecosystems". Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 107: 144–155. doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2017.01.004. ISSN 0038-0717.
  24. ^ "2016. Effects of seasonality, transport-pathway, and spatial structure on greenhouse gas fluxes in a restored wetland. - AmeriFlux". AmeriFlux. Retrieved 2018-11-10.
  25. ^ Ryals, Rebecca; Eviner, Valerie T.; Stein, Claudia; Suding, Katharine N.; Silver, Whendee L. (March 2016). "Grassland compost amendments increase plant production without changing plant communities". Ecosphere. 7 (3): e01270. doi:10.1002/ecs2.1270. ISSN 2150-8925.
  26. ^ Hall, Steven J.; Treffkorn, Jonathan; Silver, Whendee L. (2014). "Breaking the enzymatic latch: impacts of reducing conditions on hydrolytic enzyme activity in tropical forest soils". Ecology. 95 (10): 2964–2973. doi:10.1890/13-2151.1. JSTOR 43493922.
  27. ^ Liptzin, Daniel; Silver, Whendee L. (November 2015). "Spatial patterns in oxygen and redox sensitive biogeochemistry in tropical forest soils". Ecosphere. 6 (11): art211. doi:10.1890/es14-00309.1. ISSN 2150-8925.
  28. ^ Silver, Whendee L.; Hall, Steven J.; González, Grizelle (November 2014). "Differential effects of canopy trimming and litter deposition on litterfall and nutrient dynamics in a wet subtropical forest". Forest Ecology and Management. 332: 47–55. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2014.05.018. ISSN 0378-1127.