Ryan Choi's CAS Internship with the USGS

In the summers of 2017 & 2018, CAS trainee Ryan Choi interned with the USGS under the mentorship of Sasha Reed and Colin Tucker at the Southwest Biological Center. As an intern, Ryan conducted an incubation experiment investigated how water availability and limiting resources (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous) affect soil microbial activity in a semi-arid dryland ecosystem.

The research team found that multiple resource limitation explains pulse-dynamic carbon cycling better than water limitation alone and that climate-driven changes in precipitation and increased deposition of anthropogenic nitrogen have the potential to alter important dryland ecosystem processes.

Ryan gained a skillset in conducting agency research, statistics, R scripting, field work and resource monitoring, and communicating science via radio broadcast.