Mark Easter

Mark Easter is a Senior Research Associate at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. His work focuses on greenhouse gas inventories and greenhouse gas decision support systems in agriculture and forestry.  Mark contributed analysis to multiple IPCC reports on greenhouse gas inventory methods, and has contributed to national-level inventories of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry in the United States, Brazil, Kenya, Jordan, India, Spain and Italy. He is currently the project coordinator for the COMET-Farm project and technical lead for the Carbon Benefit Project, and collaborates on the COMET-Planner project.  Mark has been working on greenhouse gas inventories and decision support systems since 1999, and it remains a principal focus in his work. He earned a M.S. in Botany with an emphasis in Physiological Ecology at the University of Vermont in 1991. MJEaster_vitae-20180104

Amy Swan

Amy Swan is a Project Scientist the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She has worked on a variety of research projects that evaluate the impacts of agricultural management and land use change on greenhouse gas cycling in ecosystems. She contributed to the U.S. EPA National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for the several years, as well as supported development of web-based tools to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from farms and ranches in the U.S. (COMET-Planner and COMET-Farm) and sustainable land management projects in the developing world. Ms. Swan’s experience in soil carbon research ranges from extensive on-farm/ranch soil sampling and analysis to simulating agricultural ecosystems in the Century and DayCent ecosystem models. In her MSc thesis research, she evaluated the socio-economic and environmental factors that affect adoption of carbon sequestering agricultural conservation practices in the U.S. and nitrous oxide emissions associated with those practices. She received a BSc in Environmental Management from South Dakota State University and MSc in Ecology at Colorado State University.

Steve Williams

Steve Williams is a native South Carolinian. He earned a BS in Marine Science from University of South Carolina – Coastal Carolina College, and a MS in Physical Oceanography from The College of William and Mary – Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Steve worked as a Research Associate with Clemson University in the Belle W. Baruch Laboratory from 1991 -1995 before coming to NREL in 1995. Research interests include: modeling of agro-ecosystems in CENTURY and DAYCENT models, site-level, regional, national and global simulations of historical land-use change, current and projected cropland and grassland management practices and effects on soil carbon and nitrogen, greenhouse gases, and nutrient leaching. Steve has served as an instructor in use of CENTURY and DAYCENT models for several years.

Yao Zhang

Yao Zhang is a postdoc fellow in Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University. His interests including modeling of crop growth, water use, soil physics, soil organic matter and nutrient dynamics. His research includes climate change and management change impact on agricultural lands at different scales. CV_YaoZhang_20180118

Trung Nguyen

Trung Nguyen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, supervised by Prof. Keith Paustian. His work focuses on building decision support tools for multi-objective optimization of agricultural landscapes. He developed Agricultural Ecosystem Service Optimization (Ag-EcoSopt) modeling platform, which links DayCent model, GIS, GREET model, machine learning, and optimization algorithms to facilitate life-cycle-based assessments of large agricultural landscapes. The inputs for the modeling platform include several spatial databases (SSURGO soil, NARR weather, crop data layer, historic management information) that are automatically acquired for a targeted simulated area through an add-on GIS toolbox. Trung Nguyen_CV_Jan2018_2

Crystal Toureene

Crystal Toureene is a Research Associate in Keith Paustian’s research group. Her primary responsibility is Quality Control for the decision support tool COMET-Farm. Additionally, she has completed extensive QC work on the COMET-Planner and Carbon Benefits Project tools. Crystal has intimate knowledge of quantification methods for greenhouse gas fluxes in cropland and animal production systems at the entity level. She has moderate experience with Java programming and R Statistical Software. She also has considerable lab experience processing soil samples for chemical and physical analysis. Her passions include, sustainable agriculture, community supported agriculture and gardening.

Matt Stermer, Research Associate, Outreach and Education Specialist

Matthew Stermer is a Research Associate in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.  He is the Outreach and Education Specialist for the COMET-Farm and Comet-Planner tools, and he is also an agronomist. As the Outreach and Education Specialist for the COMET-Farm team, Matthew develops and conducts audience specific training on the COMET-Farm and COMET-Planner tools. Matthew also provides user support for the COMET tools. The list of COMET-Farm users that he has trained include, NRCS staff, NGOs, researchers, students, land owners, land managers, farmers and ranchers. He develops and implements training curriculum for various greenhouse account tools developed by the team. Matthew also supports the Carbon Benefits Project in a similar capacity.
Matthew has also worked with many farmers, private companies, state and county governments in evaluating carbon sequestration and GHG emissions reeducation in agriculture.  Prior to joining the team at Colorado State University, Matthew worked for an agriculture development company. He worked on manure management and regulation compliances for Dairies and Feedlots. He also collated, processed and analyzed soil tests.

Ernie Marx

Ernie Marx is a Research Associate at the Colorado State University Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. He works primarily on modeling and data analysis related to greenhouse gas emissions from cropland. Prior to sitting in front of a computer, Ernie worked as an Extension Agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources in Colorado. He received an MS in Soil Science from Oregon State University, where he also worked in a research program examining nutrient management in corn, small grain and vegetable production systems. Marx_CV_05202015

Nycole Echeverria

Nycole Echeverria is a Research Assistant with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She has worked with the BANR project, the COMET-Farm project, and various other modeling projects. Nycole received her undergraduate degree from Colorado State University in Biology and is currently working on her master’s degree in Greenhouse Gas Management and Accounting.