Dr. Johan Six

Group of Sustainable agroecosystems - ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Dr. Six received his PhD in Soil Science in 1998 from Colorado State University. His research conducted at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL), focused on the mechanisms of soil carbon stabilization under no-tillage. Dr. Six remained as a Research Scientist at NREL from 1998 until 2002. He led and was involved in many projects investigating the effect of land use change and management on greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. At UCDavis, he further developed this line of research with a focus on the feedbacks between management options (e.g., tillage, cover cropping, green manuring, sustainable farming, and grazing), global change (e.g., elevated CO2 and climate change), and biogeochemical cycling. He studies the complex interactions between soil (e.g, structure, texture and mineralogy), plants (e.g., diversity, nutrient uptake, and root growth), soil biota (e.g. fungi, bacteria, and earthworms), and biogeochemical cycles. He conducts experimental work at both the plot and landscape levels and subsequently integrates it with simulation modeling to identify gaps in our knowledge, generate testable hypotheses, underpin the mechanistic bases of the models, and predict ecosystem response to global change.