Gomez-Casanovas Lab
Environmental & Ecological Sustainability Research
ABOUT
Howdy and Welcome!
We are biogeochemists, ecosystem ecologists, soil scientists, and plant physiologists. We are interested in improving the environmental and ecological sustainability of agricultural land and our natural resources.
We work at the nexus of climate, energy and food security to find answers to a critical question:
How can we sustainably meet the demand for plant biomass to provide sufficient food, feed and energy with an increasing global population of 11 billion people while improving the resilience and sustainability of agricultural and managed land?
We combine lab, field and modeling experiments in a holistic way to tackle today’s grand challenges integrating and expanding on mechanistic knowledge of biogeochemical cycles. We measure key processes and metrics related with the C, N, P, energy and H2O cycles from the leaf to the ecosystem and across the soil-plant-atmosphere interface. These key metrics reflect the ability of ecosystems to store C, cool or warm the atmosphere (i.e. Greenhouse Gas emissions and biophysical properties), enhance N and P ecosystem retention, and to improve water use and quality to support growth.
We focus our research efforts on ecosystems across several climates from arid and semi-arid to subtropical regions.
The Gomez-Casanovas lab is located at Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center @ Vernon, TX.