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About MeI am a Stengl-Wyer Postdoctoral Scholar in the Wolf and Farrior labs in the department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. I completed my PhD under the supervision of Duncan Menge in the department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology at Columbia University. My research encompasses biogeochemistry, plant ecophysiology and the response of terrestrial ecosystems to global change. Specifically I am interested in patterns, trajectories and controls of the nitrogen and carbon cycles and their feedbacks with climate.
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News
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August 2021:
New paper out in American Naturalist! We analyzed the US Forest Service Forest Inventory & Analysis database to show that bimodality in nitrogen fixing tree abundance is the norm in the United States; in both young and old forests. We then used theory to explore the mechanisms that could generate this pattern and the conditions under which these mechanisms may occur and be important. Bytnerowicz and Menge 2021. |
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July 2021:
I had a great time at Phys-Fest 3! There I learned lots of new techniques in plant eco-physiology at the beautiful Colorado State University's Mountain Campus. It was so wonderful making lots of new friends (can't wait 'til we see each other again!) and having fun doing things like taking a dip in an ice-cold creek in the mornings and hiking around the majestic Rockies. Thank you to all the organizers, instructors, and funders! Photo credit: Claudio Guevara |
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July 2021:
New paper out in Biogeosciences! We developed a modified representation of symbiotic nitrogen fixation in the land component of NOAA's GFLD Earth System Model. Kou-Giesbrecht et al. 2021. |
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February 2021:
I am so honored to have been selected as the recipient of the 2020 Don Jay Melnick Dissertation Award from the faculty at Columbia's E3B department, who have inspired me so much over the last few years. It is so meaningful to me that the award is in Don's memory. Don was my Thesis Development advisor and was incredibly supportive to my professional growth and my personal life. I am grateful to have known him and cherish the many conversations that we shared. |
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December 2020:
After a long delay due to COVID-19 (my private defense was in April), I finally gave my public exit talk at Columbia. It was E3B's first exit talk on Zoom and although I would have loved to have done it in person, it was great having friends, family, and collaborators tune in from all over the world! |
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November 2020:
I was honored to give my first invited department seminar (via Zoom, of course) at the department of Integrative Biology here at UT Austin! |
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November 2020:
Check out this Q&A that UT Austin's Biodiversity Center did about me and my research! |
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May 2020:
I'm delighted to announce that this summer I will be joining the Wolf and Farrior labs at the University of Texas at Austin as a Stengl-Wyer Postdoctoral Scholar. |
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April 2020:
I'm a doctor! Yippee! Thank you to everyone that supported me along the way, particularly my family, my advisor, and my committee. Also, huge shout out to E3B for the bubblies! |
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December 2019:
I had a poster and was a coauthor on Duncan Menge's talk at AGU in San Francisco. Both were in the "Carbon and Nutrient Cycle Interactions in the "Terrestrial Ecosystems: Integrating Theory, Observations, Experiments, and Models" session - thank you to the INCyTE folks for organizing! My poster was on how temperature and species affect the timescales over which nitrogen fixation is regulated, with Kevin Griffin and Duncan Menge as coauthors. Duncan's talk was on the structural and metabolic costs of nitrogen fixation, with Amelia Wolf and Kevin Griffin as additional coauthors. |
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December 2019:
I'll be spending the next few months in Southern California as a visiting student researcher in Pete Homyak's lab at UC Riverside. Looking forward to the warm weather and interacting with Pete and his fantastic group while I am here! |
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June 2019:
I enjoyed visiting Oregon's Coast Range, where I measured photosynthesis and dark respiration on red alder and Douglas fir. These data will tell us something about how leaf (or needle) carbon exchange changes with added nitrogen and phosphorus and how this may be different for nitrogen fixing vs. nonfixing trees. Thank you to Steve Perakis for showing me around the site and for providing support while I was there. |
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May 2019: I gave a CRPPY talk at Princeton on the timescales over which nitrogen fixation is regulated in tropical and temperate woody plants. It was great seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and hearing about the exciting research happening in the EEB departments at Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, Penn, and Yale. |
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April 2019: New paper out in Methods in Ecology and Evolution that develops a method for making coupled measurements of nitrogenase activity and carbon exchange in nitrogen fixing plants that are continuous, repeatable and in real-time. Bytnerowicz et al. 2019. |
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December 2018: I had a great time at my first AGU meeting in Washington DC! There I gave a talk in the session "From -omics to the Earth System: Bridging Scales to Improve our Understanding of Earth System Function and Response I" with Kevin Griffin and Duncan Menge as coauthors. |
Contact
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Thomas A. Bytnerowicz, Ph.D.
Stengl-Wyer Postdoctoral Scholar Integrative Biology The University of Texas at Austin tbytnerowicz@utexas.edu |
