Rate My Professor Meredith Steele

Steele’s research focuses on macrosystems ecology and biogeochemistry in urban and agricultural landscapes, examining how development influences land, water, ecosystem services, and biogeochemical cycles at broad scales. Her current projects explore urban salinization effects on water quality and ecosystem function, urban morphology heterogeneity under changing climate conditions and implications for ecosystem services, multi-scale drivers of nutrient exports from United States watersheds, and global macroscale soil biogeochemical cycling. Key publications include "Historically inconsistent productivity and respiration fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems" (Nature Communications, 2022, cited by 72), "Urban soil carbon and nitrogen converge at a continental scale" (Ecological Monographs, 2020, cited by 63), "Continental-scale homogenization of residential lawn plant communities" (Landscape and Urban Planning, 2017, cited by 177), and "Assessing the homogenization of urban land management planning in a state-wide extent" (Landscape and Urban Planning, 2014, cited by 159). She has co-developed global databases such as the Monthly Global Soil Respiration Database (MGRsD) and Hourly and Daily Timescale Global Soil Respiration Data (HGRsD), both released in 2021. Her scholarship, with over 3,000 citations, informs updates to ecosystem models for climate change predictions.