About Jocelyn Lavallee, Agricultural Soil Carbon Scientist

Jocelyn Lavallee

Agricultural Soil Carbon Scientist

Contact

Remote Office

Work

Areas of expertise:

soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics, carbon sequestration, natural climate solutions

Jocelyn studies soil carbon and nitrogen cycling in agricultural systems in the context of climate mitigation opportunities. She works to quantify the realistic potential of agricultural soils to contribute to climate mitigation and to ensure that emerging soil carbon markets are backed by rigorous science.

Jocelyn uses her knowledge of soil carbon dynamics, methods of soil carbon measurement and modeling, and agricultural system functioning to analyze carbon market practices and protocols with the ultimate goal of increasing the quality of carbon credits being generated and traded to produce meaningful climate mitigation outcomes.

Background

Before coming to EDF, Jocelyn worked at the University of Manchester and Colorado State University. Jocelyn’s past work has spanned a range of topics, from soil organic matter chemistry to soil food webs to soil biogeochemical modeling. She is an Affiliate of the Soil and Crop Sciences Department and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University, and maintains an active research program focused on soil organic matter dynamics at multiple scales. She is a leading expert on soil organic matter fractionation.

Jocelyn received her PhD in Ecology from Colorado State University and her BS in Science of Natural and Environmental Systems from Cornell University. 

Publications

Rocci, K. S., Lavallee, J. M., Stewart, C. E., and Cotrufo, M. F. Soil organic carbon response to global environmental change depends on its distribution between mineral-associated and particulate organic matter: a meta-analysis. Science of the Total Environment 793, 148569 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148569

Lugato, E., Lavallee, J. M., Haddix, M., Panagos, P., & Cotrufo, M. F. (2021). Different climate sensitivity of particulate and mineral associated soil organic matter. Nature Geoscience 14, 293-300 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00744-x

Zhang, Y., Lavallee, J. M., Robertson, A. D., Even, R., Ogle, S. M., Paustian, K. and Cotrufo, M. F. Simulating measurable ecosystem carbon and nitrogen dynamics with the mechanistically-defined MEMS 2.0 model. Biogeosciences 18, 3147-3171 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3147-2021

Rhymes, J. M., Cordero, I., Chomel, M., Lavallee, J. M., Straathof, A. L., Ashworth, D., Langridge, H., Semchenko, M., de Vries, F. T., Johnson, D., and Bardgett, R. D. Are researchers following best storage practices for measuring soil biochemical properties? SOIL 7, 95-106 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-95-2021

Lavallee, J. M., Soong, J. L., and Cotrufo, M. F. (2020) Conceptualizing soil organic matter into particulate and mineral-associated forms to address global change in the 21st century. Global Change Biology 26(1), 261-273 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14859

Yan, M., Pan, G., Lavallee, J. M., and Conant, R. T. (2020) Rethinking sources of nitrogen to cereal crops. Global Change Biology 26(1), 191-199 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14908

Lavallee, J. M., Conant, R. T., Haddix, M. L., Follett, R. L., Bird, M. I., and Paul, E. A.  Selective preservation of pyrogenic carbon across soil organic matter fractions and its influence on calculations of carbon mean residence times. Geoderma 354, 113866 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2019.07.024

Chomel, M., Lavallee, J. M., Alvarez-Segura, N., de Castro, F., Rhymes, J. M., Caruso, T., de Vries, F. T., Baggs, E., Emmerson, M., Bardgett, R., and Johnson, D. Drought modifies incorporation of recent plant photosynthate into soil food webs regardless of their complexity. Global Change Biology 25(10): 3549- 3561 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14754

Fry, E. L., De Long, J. R., et al. including Lavallee, J.M. Using plant, microbe and soil fauna traits to improve the predictive power of biogeochemical cycling models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 10(1), 146-157 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13092

Lavallee, J. M., Conant, R.T., Paul, E.A., and Cotrufo, M.F. Incorporation of shoot versus root-derived 13C and 15N into mineral-associated organic matter fractions: elucidating mechanisms using a litter-soil slurry incubation. Biogeochemistry 137, 379–393 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-018-0428-z

Crowther, T. W., et al. including Lavallee, J. M. Quantifying global soil carbon losses in response to warming. Nature, 540, 104-110 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20150

Conant, R. T., et al. including Lavallee, J. M. Temperature and soil organic matter decomposition rates - synthesis of current knowledge and a way forward. Global Change Biology, 17, 3392-3404 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02496.x