April 24, 2020 – SBS’s Dave Bowling has been awarded a University of Utah 2020 Distinguished Research Award.

The award recognizes outstanding achievements in research by University of Utah tenured faculty. Up to three awards for outstanding achievements in research are awarded to University of Utah tenured faculty each year. This prestigious research award provides the faculty member with a $10,000 grant to pursue research and/or creative pursuits and recognition at the UofU Commencement. Nominees are evaluated on the impact and significance of their career research or scholarly work to their field, as well as to the improvement and enrichment of the human condition. Nominations are accepted once per year for this award.

Dr. Bowling, who earned his PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder, has a long and sustained record of research and scholarly publications, research

grants and community-engaged research in ecosystem science, physiology and functional morphology and plant science. Primary research interests in his lab are in the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and water within terrestrial ecosystems, and between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. “Work in our group,” based on the lab’s research statement, “studies how environmental and climate change affect the carbon and water cycles of forests, grasslands, and shrublands of the mountain West.” The group investigates 1) how living things are affected by biological, physical, and chemical factors, 2) how living things modify their environment, and especially 3) processes that control cycling of carbon, water, and nutrients within ecosystems.  His work is interdisciplinary, merging basic science approaches from ecology, hydrology, atmospheric science, and geochemistry.  We use a combination of field observations and instrumentation, manipulative experiments, and modeling.

Current and recent research projects include the seasonality of ecosystem processes in seasonally snow-covered forests, forest-atmosphere carbon dioxide exchange, water sources and transpiration of riparian and montane trees, snow and stream water quality in urbanizing regions of the west and urban trace gas emissions.

You can read more about each of these projects here.

Read about a recent study of Dr. Bowling’s which linked seasonal GPP cycles to a process that occurs with photosynthesis.

Dr. Bowling was one of three given the award by the University of Utah.