Associated Resources

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

School of Natural Sciences

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

Primary contact information

Secondary contact information

  • Name: Donna Birch Trahan
  • Title: Public Information Representative
  • Email: dbirchtrahan@ucmerced.edu
  • Primary Phone: (209) 228-4406
  • Secondary Phone: (209) 205-8561

Associated Topics

Background

What happens to the soil as Earth’s climate changes? When you consider the potential effects on life – plants, microbes, animals and even humans – as nutrients and moisture in soils change, it’s a crucial question.

Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe studies how changing environmental conditions effect vital soil processes, especially how dynamics of essential nutrient cycles might be changing in what scientists have come to call the “critical zone” – near surface environment where important geological, biological, and chemical processes interact to sustain life on the surface of the earth.

She can comment on the role of human beings in changing soil quality (through changes in landuse or climate), how carbon is stored in soils, how armed conflicts lead to land degradation, and the relationship of national/group identity with property relations that govern land ownership and control.