Alison Hoyt

Update: I will be joining Stanford as an assistant professor of Earth System Science.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry working with Susan Trumbore and an affiliate at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. I completed my Ph.D. at MIT in 2017 in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with Charles Harvey. My work addresses how biogeochemical cycles respond to human impacts, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable and least understood carbon stocks in the tropics and the Arctic.

My current research focuses on rates of soil carbon cycling and their future response to climate change. I collaborate closely with the International Soil Radiocarbon Database community and the Congo Biogeochemistry Observatory. I also investigate methane emissions from wetlands in the Peruvian Amazon. In the past, I studied the hydrology and carbon cycle of tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia, as well as carbon released from permafrost thaw in Siberia.

I address these issues at multiple scales. At small scales, I focus on mechanistic, process-level understanding of biogeochemical cycles using detailed field studies, isotope measurements and numerical modeling. At regional to global scales, I quantify the impacts of climate change and land use change using remote sensing, geospatial analysis and the development of new soil carbon databases.

Click here to view my CV.