Thea Whitman
Studies how fire-altered (pyrogenic) carbon and biochar interact with soil microbial communities to stabilize or prime soil carbon.
The record
- Standing
- active practice
- Based
- University of British Columbia · Canada
- Focus area
- Isotope Tracing
- Works on
- pyrogenic organic matter, biochar, priming, wildfire soil microbiology, stable isotope probing.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Soil microbial ecologist trained in Johannes Lehmann’s lab at Cornell, who led the Whitman Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining the University of British Columbia’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology in 2025. Her isotope and sequencing work shows pyrogenic organic matter can reduce loss of native soil carbon, with the largest microbial shifts in low-carbon soils, and extends fire ecology frameworks belowground.
She moved to the University of British Columbia in 2025; the lab site that carries most of the published work is still the Wisconsin one.
Where to read them
- Thea Whitman — lab or personal site
- University of British Columbia — the organisation
- Whitman et al. (2016) microbial community dynamics after pyrogenic and fresh organic matter addition, ISME J
- Whitman et al. (2021) microbial community shifts reflect losses of native soil carbon, AEM
- Whitman et al. (2014) pyrogenic carbon counteracts positive priming
Sources for this record
Corrections
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