Richard is an ecosystem scientist interested in above-belowground plant functional ecology and how this both drives and response to global change. He’s interested in ecosystem dynamics and the scalability of measurements, both in time and space. Prior to working as a Teaching Fellow on the TERRAFORM project at Trinity College Dublin, he was a PDRA and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany, and gained his PhD from the University of Edinburgh.
He’s interested in the ecosystem function of plants when they are living but also when they are dead. He also likes method innovation to tackle challenging problems and has built instruments to measure root phenology in ecosystem experiments. He also has experience in stable isotope techniques, including producing isotope-labelled litter and measuring foliar uptake of nitrogen deposition.
Otherwise, he likes hills and forests, books, gardening, cooking, and early mornings.