Natasja van Gestel

Natasja van Gestel is a quantitative ecologist examining the effect of warmer temperatures on Antarctic vegetation and soil microbes. Her research involves a field warming experiment to determine how warming affects the carbon balance. Incoming carbon fluxes (i.e., photosynthesis) and outgoing carbon fluxes (i.e., respiration) are both sensitive to warming - which of the two is more sensitive to warming? Are some moss species more sensitive than others? Likewise for the soil microbes? Antarctica is an ideal model system to study warming effects on the terrestrial ecosystem, because it is a simplified ecosystem in a rapidly warming region of the planet.