Professional summary

Sabine is a soil ecologist with an interest in the links between the soil, plants, and the atmosphere. She received her MSc (Diplom) from the Friedrich Schiller University (Germany) for her research on water uptake of competitive plants in a semi-arid savannah in South Africa using stable isotopes. She then completed a PhD in climate change ecology at the Technical University of Denmark. Her early career was focused on soil microbial ecology and the effect of climate change on ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycling. She used long-term experimental monitoring and environmental gradients to study these ecosystem processes.

Between 2020 and 2023, Sabine coordinated the National Field Survey of the Welsh landscape as part of the Environmental and Rural Affairs Monitoring & Modelling Programme (ERAMMP). During this time, she oversaw the completion of various field survey components including soils, plants, woody and historic features, freshwater and soil erosion. She also co-led the work preparing and analysing soil data her teams had collected.

Sabine has now transitioned back to her scientific roots. She studies the connections between plant and soil responses to climate and land-use change using Welsh and UK datasets. She is also involved in the European project CLIMASOIL investigating impacts of climate (change) on soil hydraulic properties and soil carbon storage. Sabine is involved in the EU soil horizon project AI4SoilHealth on EU topsoils, and potential related projects on subsoils. Additionally, Sabine manages the UKCEH's long-term Heathland Climate Change Experiment.

Selected publications

Robinson D.A. et al. , (2022), Analytical modelling of soil porosity and bulk density across the soil organic matter and land-use continuum. Scientific Reports, 12, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11099-7

Kröel-Dulay György et al. , (2022), Field experiments underestimate aboveground biomass response to drought. Nature Ecology & Evolution, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01685-3

Seaton Fiona M. et al. , (2021), Long-term drought and warming alter soil bacterial and fungal communities in an upland heathland. Ecosystems, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00715-8

García-Palacios Pablo et al. , (2021), Evidence for large microbial-mediated losses of soil carbon under anthropogenic warming. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43017-021-00178-4

Abbasi Akane O. et al. , (2020), Reviews and syntheses: Soil responses to manipulated precipitation changes – an assessment of meta-analyses. Biogeosciences, 17, 3859-3873, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-3859-2020

Seaton Fiona M. et al. , (2020), Soil health cluster analysis based on national monitoring of soil indicators. European Journal of Soil Science, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ejss.12958

Halbritter Aud H. et al. , (2020), The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx). Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 22-37, https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13331

Reinsch Sabine et al. , (2017), Shrubland primary production and soil respiration diverge along European climate gradient. Scientific Reports, 7, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep43952

Crowther T.W. et al. , (2016), Quantifying global soil carbon losses in response to warming. Nature, 540, 104-108, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature20150

Carey Joanna C. et al. , (2016), Temperature response of soil respiration largely unaltered with experimental warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605365113