Keith Paustian - Homepage

Our research focuses on terrestrial  greenhouse gas cycling in agriculture, forestry and land use change.

Field Sampling
Field sampling is a foundational component of our research.  We will sample soil from almost anywhere given the opportunity, but focus mostly on private farm and ranch lands in the U.S.  We complement  environmental data collection with management information from the land owners to determine the impacts of agricultural management and land use history on soil organic matter change.

Modeling
In our work we use the Century and DAYCENT ecosystem models to dig deeper into ecosystem processes, predict future conditions, evaluate management scenarios and quantify greenhouse gas dynamics at regional and national scales.

Synthesis
We use field data, mechanistic and empirical modeling, peer-reviewed research, activity databases and other tools to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural management systems and land use change.  The outcomes of synthesis projects include: national and regional GHG inventories, meta-analyses of practices influencing GHG emissions over wide-ranging management, climate and soil variability, and publications and reports.

Decision Support
Much of our work is designed to be transferred to the public through the development of decision support systems.  These systems are designed with intuitive user interfaces and simplified data entry to put complex modeling and GHG assessment tools in the hands of farmers, ranchers, project developers, policy-makers, students and other scientists.