Associate Professional Researcher
Email: wyjzhu@ucdavis.edu
Office: 3238 Plant and Environmental Sciences Building
Phone: 752-2156
Interests:
Dr. Xia Zhu-Barker is a soil biogeochemist who specializes in the processes that regulate nutrient biogeochemical cycles and improving land management practices. Her research addresses issues of agricultural sustainability including climate change mitigation, and focuses on soil, plant, and microbial interactions that ultimately affect livestock and human health. Her work ranges from novel methods in isotopic techniques and molecular biology to assessments of land management using community-based surveys, mechanistic exploration of soil-plant-microbe interactions, and process-based modeling.

The research topics of her projects include:
• Microbial and abiotic processes involved in the production and consumption of nitrogen and carbon gases (N2O, NOX, NH3, CO2, CH4)
• Land management practices (e.g., compost, fertilizer, cover crops, irrigation, and tillage) that change soil health, nitrogen use efficiency, crop productivity, and carbon turnover.
• Process oriented modeling of carbon/nitrogen turnover in agricultural ecosystems.
• Environmental changes on the sustainability and resilience of agricultural ecosystems