Courtney Creamer
Biography
Courtney's research is broadly focused on how the chemistry and accessibility of soil organic matter influences its turnover and stabilization, and subsequently, how this impacts the functioning of natural and managed ecosystems. Many of the global challenges we face (climate change, biodiversity loss, food security) are dependent upon soil processes, and her work examines current controls on soil carbon and nitrogen stability with the aim of predicting and managing the response of soils to global change scenarios. Her particular expertise lies in linking the quantity, accessibility, and chemical composition of soil carbon and nitrogen to microbial activity and community composition, using a variety of methods. Previous projects have focused plant-soil-microbe feedbacks in response along gradients of grassland and rangeleland degradation (Australia and Texas), nutrient enrichment, and edaphic properties.
Education
- Ph.D., Purdue University, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2012
- B.A., Miami University (Ohio), Microbiology, 2007
Professional Experience
- 2015 - present Research Microbiologist (post-doc), USGS, Menlo Park CA
- 2012 - 2015 Office of the Chief Executive Postdoctoral Fellow, CSIRO, Adelaide SA, Australia
- 2008 - 2012 Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant, Purdue University, West Lafayette IN
- 2006 - 2007 Undergraduate Research Assistant, Miami University, Oxford OH
- 2005 - Laboratory Intern, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH
Science and Products
Arctic Biogeochemical Response to Permafrost Thaw (ABRUPT)
Warming and thawing of permafrost soils in the Arctic is expected to become widespread over the coming decades. Permafrost thaw changes ecosystem structure and function, affects resource availability for wildlife and society, and decreases ground stability which affects human infrastructure. Since permafrost soils contain about half of the global soil carbon (C) pool, the magnitude of C...
Understanding Impacts of Sea-Level Rise and Land Management on Critical Coastal Marsh Habitat
Coastal wetlands are some of the most productive and valuable habitats in the world. Louisiana contains 40% of the coastal wetlands in the United States, which provide critical habitat for waterfowl and fisheries, as well as many other benefits, such as storm surge protection for coastal communities. In terms of ecosystem services, biological resource production, and infrastructure investments...
Biogeochemistry of the Critical Zone: Origin and Fate of Organic Matter
Changing temperature, precipitation, and land use intensification has resulted in global soil degradation. The accompanying loss of soil organic matter (SOM) decreases important soil health services. Soil organic matter is a major global pool of carbon; if SOM can be increased, soils can mitigate elevated atmospheric CO2. However, there are major knowledge gaps in SOM persistence....
Response to ‘Stochastic and deterministic interpretation of pool models’
We concur with Azizi‐Rad et al. (2021) that it is vital to critically evaluate and compare different soil carbon models, and we welcome the opportunity to further describe the unique contribution of the PROMISE model (Waring et al. 2020) to this literature. The PROMISE framework does share many features with established biogeochemical models, as...
Waring, Bonnie G.; Sulman, Benjamin N.; Reed, Sasha; Smith, A. Peyton; Averill, Colin; Creamer, Courtney; Cusack, Daniela F.; Hall, Steven J.; Jastrow, Julie D.; Jilling, Andrea; Kemner, Kenneth M.; Kleber, Markus; Allen Liu, Xiao-Jun; Pett-Ridge, Jennifer; Schulz, Marjorie S. A combined microbial and ecosystem metric of carbon retention efficiency explains land cover-dependent soil microbial biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships
While soil organic carbon (C) is the foundation of productive and healthy ecosystems, the impact of the ecology of microorganisms on C-cycling remains unknown. We manipulated the diversity, applied here as species richness, of the microbial community present in similar soils on two contrasting land-covers—an adjacent pasture and forest—and...
Ernakovich, Jessica G.; Baldock, Jeffrey R; Creamer, Courtney; Sanderman, Jonathan; Kalbitz, Karsten; Farrell, Mark From pools to flow: The PROMISE framework for new insights on soil carbon cycling in a changing world
Soils represent the largest terrestrial reservoir of organic carbon, and the balance between soil organic carbon (SOC) formation and loss will drive powerful carbon‐climate feedbacks over the coming century. To date, efforts to predict SOC dynamics have rested on pool‐based models, which assume classes of SOC with internally homogenous...
Waring, Bonnie G.; Sulman, Benjamin N.; Reed, Sasha; Smith, A. Peyton; Averill, Colin; Creamer, Courtney; Cusack, Daniela F.; Hall, Steven J.; Jastrow, Julie; Kemner, Kenneth M.; Kleber, Markus; Liu, Xiao-Jun Allen; Pett-Ridge, Jennifer; Schulz, Marjorie S. Biological and mineralogical controls over cycling of low molecular weight organic compounds along a soil chronosequence
Low molecular weight organic compounds (LMWOC) represent a small but critical component of soil organic matter (SOM) for microbial growth and metabolism. The fate of these compounds is largely under microbial control, yet outside the cell, intrinsic soil properties can also significantly influence their turnover and retention. Using a...
McFarland, Jack; Waldrop, Mark P.; Strawn, Daniel; Creamer, Courtney; Lawrence, Corey R.; Haw, Monica