I am a post doctoral researcher at the University of New Mexico studying the impact of compost on microbial soil communities in agriculture. I have a PhD in Environmental Life Sciences from Arizona State University where I studied predatory bacteria within biological soil crusts (biocrusts), topsoil microbial communities found in arid lands, describing the first such organism in this system and its impacts on the functionality of biocrusts.
I am currently studying how soil properties, forage and fungal and bacterial communities respond to compost amendments along an aridity gradient. Additionally I study how biocrust communities, especially cyanobacteria, respond to amendments. I use a range of lab and field-based techniques to investigate these questions from Illumina sequencing to culturing.
Contact: jbethany446@gmail.com or jbethany446@unm.edu
Julie Bethany Rakes 