Chelsea Carey

Director of Soil Research and Conservation

As Director of Soil Research and Conservation, I develop and lead priority research projects and partnerships that will help inform rangeland management across California and beyond. I help oversee our partnership with TomKat Ranch, and am currently leading a large multi-state, multi-institute project to better understand how rangeland management practices affect carbon sequestration across space and time. My research generally focuses on characterizing soil properties that are relevant to rangeland soil health and climate change mitigation, determining how management influences these properties across space and time, and identifying ways that explicit consideration of the soil can improve success of conservation practices like riparian restoration.

I grew up near Chicago and attended DePaul University as an undergraduate. While there, I developed a strong appreciation for the wonderful world of soil through my research on the invasive plant, common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). I went on to receive my Ph.D. from the University of California Merced’s Environmental Systems Program in 2014 and spent time as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Riverside.