Dryland Plant & Microbial Ecology:
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Welcome! I'm Cassie, a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of New Mexico, where I work in the talented labs of Dr. Jenn Rudgers and Dr. Lee Taylor. My research focuses on how dryland ecosystems respond to and recover from extreme climate events, particularly drought, across spatial scales, ranging from microbes to ecosystems.
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Recent happenings:
Fall 2025:
Spring & Summer 2025:
2024:
2023:
2022:
- I'm busy training for the upcoming Big Tesuque Trail Race, which is one of my all time favorites. It's a trail race through that runs up the Santa Fe Mountains through miles and miles of golden aspen trees.
- Finishing the FINAL lab work of my grad school career!!
- Planning a LTER Virtual Panel: Co-creating knowledge: a panel discussion on community-inspired research across long-term ecological studies
- Nearing the end of my service on the Regional Climate Planning Taskforce -- learn more about the efforts here.
Spring & Summer 2025:
- Participated in the LTER Strategic Vision Planning
- Presented at ESA as an invited speaker in on OOS: Dynamic Dryland Soil Microbiomes in the Anthropocene -- keep an eye out for our upcoming paper! :)
- Selected as an NMDC 2025 Ambassador
2024:
- Presented at Soil Ecology Society Meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan
- Co-PI Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory: MONet Soil Function (Seasonal water availability & associated phenologic shifts)
- Attended the Microbiome Data Management in Action Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia
2023:
- Co-lead the LTER Visual Media Series Workshops
- Raced the Jemez Trail Race 50k race with one of my oldest friends! So far, so fun.
- ESA: Presented a poster titled " Drought legacy impacts plant and plant-soil interactions to improve Bouteloua gracilis recovery post-drought in a desert grassland"
- We had a robust Rudgers lab showing -- Labmates Purbendra Yogi, Mariah Patton, Dylan Taylor and I presented posters during the session. Jenn and our postdoc Vanessa Moreira C. Fernandes presented talks. I'm always so proud of the work we do at Sevilleta LTER!
2022:
- Women of the Wild: challenging gender disparities in field stations and marine laboratories is published! I co-authored a chapter titled "Identifying factors that contribute to positive and negative student experiences at field-based institutions."
- Selected as an ESA Katherine S. McCarter Policy Fellow and awarded a Sevilleta Summer Fellowship
- Awarded the competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! I'm so grateful for this honor and appreciative of all the help along my journey, it seriously takes a village.
- Raced the annual Jemez Mountain Trail Race 15 mi run with UNM Bio friends former Grinnell College teammates living in NM. It was my longest racing distance (and run) to date, and I miraculously came in 5th for women and top 20 overall.
- Albuquerque city council formally adopts the updated Climate Action Plan! This is the culmination of work that I, and other task force members, have worked on since Aug. 2020.
