Assistant Professor Jennifer King's graduate advisor told her to 'Put as many arrows in your quiver as you can and gain experience in as many places as possible. King took that advice to heart and took aim at biogeochemical processes from many angles.
Since her days as an undergraduate at Rice University in 1994, the Texas native has traveled everywhere from the North Slope of Alaska to the rolling shortgrass steppe of Colorado, studying the interaction between atmospheric science, soil science and ecology.
Her experiences in different parts of the world led the well-traveled scientist to see a broader view of the environment. King's experience in Alaska's uncontrolled tundra and now Western Minnesota's tilled fields led her to study environmental cycles that occur in all sorts of backdrops, managed and natural.
"That's what got me thinking about global issues," she says.
By definition, King is a biogeochemist: someone who studies the environment through the perspectives of biology, geology and chemistry.
It's a title held by an increasing number of researchers interested in taking interdisciplinary approaches to understanding dynamics of the Earth system and the environmental change caused by everything from nutrient cycling to farming practices.
"Biogeochemistry is just one way of studying the world," King says. "We can use these approaches to investigate a multitude of questions ranging from climate change and nutrient cycling to farming practices and renewable energy."
While the study of biogeochemistry has been around for years, King has taken a new perspective and viewed biogeochemical processes in the context of large-scale processes and how things fit together in the Earth System.
"You can't really take any issue in isolation," she says. "You have to take an interdisciplinary approach."
King's education took a very interdisciplinary path as she finished her undergraduate career with a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. She then decided to continue her graduate pursuits at the University of California at Irvine where she studied earth system science and worked as a graduate research assistant, gaining useful hands-on experience.
In 1999, King moved to Fort Collins, Colo., where she worked with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service as a postdoctoral fellow studying shortgrass steppe ecosystem dynamics. She joined the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate in 2002 and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. Collaborating with faculty throughout the University is something King says she enjoys.
"The most interesting part of this work is the interaction with people," she says.
King has also had the opportunity to interact with students as an instructor for Introduction to Environmental Science and Biogeochemical Processes. In addition to her work in the classroom, she oversees the work of undergraduate and graduate students in the King Laboratory for Biogeochemistry. Students in the lab work on projects that examine how ecosystem and biogeochemical processes respond to natural and human-induced environmental changes. King says she is careful to let the students learn through their own experiences and achievements while providing the guidance they need to get started.
"You learn from doing it yourself," she says to her students, "not from me telling you how to do it."
In one of her projects, King is collaborating with fellow faculty members Deborah Allan, Jeff Strock, and Jay Bell on a four-year grant funded by the USDA's National Research Initiative Program. This team of SWC faculty received the largest such grant in the nation, and they are now looking at crop production with relation to carbon and nitrogen cycling. The project will help determine what types of long-term farming systems are the most productive and sustainable and how management effects vary depending on landscape position and soil type.
With her wide breadth of knowledge, King has truly melded an array of sciences into her research. Her work has helped furthering the understanding of biogeochemical processes to help better predict the effects of natural or anthropogenic environmental change.
"We're looking at projects on agricultural systems and how they fit into the broader community," she says. "There has to be some broader interest."
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