All hands on deck for wetland soil processing! It was a truly interdisciplinary effort! Thank you to biology students (Aied, Emory, Dustin, Diego) and friends (Natasha - engineering, Kayla - graphic design, Gabriel - music) for all your help!!! This was the first week of semester break, but this amazing motley crew worked hard to finish the sample sieving and splitting before the holidays!

Our amazing field crew successfully collected 48 1-m cores! This sampling was made possible by ECU Geological Sciences staff Mara and Scott, collaborator John, and undergrads C.J. and Bobby. Thanks team!!!

Gina (left) presents work focused on tradeoffs in microbial functions in constructed wetlands. Aied (right) presents work on bacterial isolate diversity at the long-term nutrient enrichment wetland experiment.

R.B. Bledsoe, E.Z. Bean, A.L. Peralta. If you flood it, they will come: Balancing microbial services in an urban wetland. 
A. Garcia, R.B. Bledsoe, A.L. Peralta. Long-term nutrient enrichment alters plant-microbe relationships in a coastal plain wetland

We had a great meeting catching up with team Urban Wetlands during a special session on wetland biogeochemistry. We kicked off the conference at the Microbial Ecology Section Mixer, sold some merch for ESA Microbial Ecology, and finished out the week leading a STEAM workshop on Applying Art, Design, and Interactivity to Enhance Science Communication!

Another year and another set of small batch, artisan made merch in support of student travel to the Ecology Society of America Annual Meeting! Thank you to graphic designer and collaborator Kayla Clark (www.kisscutstudios.com) for her expertise, talent, labor, and support!!!

AP scopes out potential field sites with GEOL collaborators. This natural floodplain wetland site is a candidate for long-term hydrologic monitoring.

Gina presented both a poster and a talk in a special ASM Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity Symposium "Global Change-Microbial Feedbacks". We also celebrated with the ASM EEB community at the ad hoc happy hour!

Kristen and Gina lead kiddos through a plant-soil-microbe game. It was a big hit!

Undergrad researchers Megan Koceja, Allison Fisk, and Emma Richards represent the lab! Job well done, gang!!!

Etheridge, J.R., B.R. Hinckley, R. Mason III, A.L. Peralta, R. Smith, T. Vogel. 2019. Identifying the causes of eutrophication and flooding in the Lake Mattamuskeet watershed. Water Resources Research Institute of The University of North Carolina Annual Conference. Raleigh, NC. March 21 – 22.

Mason, R., J.R. Etheridge, B.R. Hinckley, and A.L. Peralta. 2019. Interactions of land use and hydrologic management affect nitrogen cycling dynamics in a coastal watershed. Water Resources Research Institute of The University of North Carolina Annual Conference. Raleigh, NC. March 21 – 22.

Vogel, T., J.R. Etheridge, A.L. Peralta, J.P. Hochard. 2019. Relating groundwater well depth to water quality in rural Eastern North Carolina. Water Resources Research Institute of The University of North Carolina Annual Conference. Raleigh, NC. March 21 – 22.  ​