Daniel Fishburn

Background

About Daniel Fishburn

My academic life started on foothills of Snowdon, embarking on an undergraduate degree in zoology at Bangor University. I was lucky enough to take a year out between my second and third year to work as a conservation research officer at Echo, a yellow-shouldered Amazon Parrot conservation organisation on the small Caribbean island of Bonaire. It was here where my true passion for research was ignited. Alongside my many other roles, I had the opportunity to design and run my first independent research project investigating the feasibility of a novel watering technique for small scale reforestation projects. Taking a project from the design phase through to write up I realised that scientific research is hard! My dissertation gave me a profound respect for many researchers at my university and beyond, it inspired me to undertake my MSc by Research in Environmental Sciences where our small team aimed fill a knowledge gap in our understanding of litter decomposition in drylands and to investigate the feedback mechanisms between abiotic and biotic processes of litter decomposition. In particular, we aimed to understand what structural, biogeochemical and microbial changes are caused by exposure to UV light over the dry season, and how ultraviolet exposure affects subsequent decomposition throughout the wet season. This was my first experience studying soil science and I loved it. Towards the end of the MSc our team realised that, although we had learnt a lot about the process, there was a lot more to uncover. This planted the seed which was to blossom into the PhD project I am currently working on. We realised that a novel, humidity-mediated mechanism operates within dryland litter decomposition whereby non-rainfall water sources can activate microbes in the early morning and evening, allowing high decomposition rates in the absence of traditional water sources. For the purpose of this blurb, I won’t dive into the mechanisms too deeply, you can read my MSc to find out more. What is important is that, from this, we realised how best to move forwards and hopefully chip away at the problem. Utilizing a combination of field experiments across a forest humidity gradient in Panama and laboratory-based studies, our team aims to elucidate the mechanisms and feedback loops underlying litter decomposition in seasonal forests. We hope that, by delving into this issue we will be able to more accurately predict carbon budgets for dry forests and determine how climate change will affect forest carbon release.