The Moon Lab is part of the Watershed Studies Institute and the Biological Sciences Department at Murray State University. Our research addresses questions in ecosystem and landscape ecology. Some questions we ask include:

1. How does landscape position (e.g., surrounding land use, position along stream networks) influence the spatial patterning of microbial communities and their functions in forested freshwater wetlands? How generalizable are these patterns across geographies?

2. How does upslope N-fixing red alder affect the spatial patterning of denitrification in tidal salt marshes in the Pacific Northwest? Can we develop a spatial and temporal denitrification model for marshes in this region?

3. Does long-term deer browsing affect pools, fluxes, and transport of carbon into glacial lakes of eastern Pennsylvania?

Our lab uses field sampling, laboratory experiments, and spatial modeling to address these questions.