About Matt's Work
Matt Vadeboncoeur is a Research Scientist at the Earth Systems Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, where he is. His research focuses on understanding management, and climate related changes to the cycling of nutrients and water in forest ecosystems. His dissertation involved using a detailed regional soil chemistry data to characterize variation in the long-term sustainability of forest harvesting across the northern hardwood forest region. This question is highly relevant to current policy discussions about the potential to increase the use of local forest biomass for energy production in the northeast. Matt is also interested in investigating geochemical tracers of mineral weathering, the process by which most nutrients are ultimately derived from rocks and soils. Matt has spent several summers leading field crews in soil and vegetation sampling at the Hubbard Brook and Bartlett Experimental Forests in the White Mountain National Forest, and is also been involved in tropical forest research in Taiwan and in Amazonia. Matt has a Sc.B. with Honors in Environmental Science from Brown University and a Ph.D in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the University of New Hampshire.