John Grove

The Grove Lab studies soil fertility, soil management and plant nutrition in plant production systems.

Josh McGrath

Dr. McGrath's program conducts applied research in agronomic soil fertility and nutrient management to maximize profitability, efficiency, and protect natural resources. This lab specializes in site-specific nutrient management, manure management, and water quality protection.

Hanna Poffenbarger

Dr. Poffenbarger’s research group studies how carbon and nutrients cycle in soil-crop systems and uses this understanding to develop sustainable soil management practices and resilient production systems. Specific areas of interest include: nutrient capture and release by cover crops, spatial and temporal controls on soil nitrogen dynamics, subsoil carbon storage, and stabilization of root-derived carbon.

Wei Ren

Dr. Ren is broadly interested in understanding, assessing, and predicting interactions and feedbacks between natural and anthropogenic processes in Earth’s Ecosystems and Climate System by using an integrated systems approach with a combination of numerical models, remote sensing/GIS, and field observations/measurements. She works at multiple spatiotemporal scales, ranging from field level to watershed, regional, and global levels, and over daily, seasonal, annual, decadal, and century scales. Her research foci are to 1) investigate the impacts of coupled natural and anthropogenic factors (climate, CO2, air pollution, land cover change, and diverse land management practices); 2) assess biogeochemical dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems (cropland, grassland, forest) as influenced by global changes at broad scales (e.g. Mississippi River Basin, southeastern U.S., North America, China, India, Monsoon Asia, and the Globe); 3) develop and improve land ecosystem models, by incorporating improved representations of physical, chemical, and biological processes, to enhance the capability in simulating human activities as an interdependent component of the earth system; 4) use, analyze, and synthesize big data derived from site-level observations/experiments and remote sensing platforms for addressing broad-scaled ecological research questions.

Travis Shaddox

Dr. Shaddox's research program focuses on soil fertility and turfgrass nutrition with consideration given to reducing costs and environmental risk from the application of granular and foliar nutrients. In addition, Dr. Shaddox continues to develop reliable interpretations of soil and tissue tests for turfgrasses.