Dr. Linda R. Barrett
Dr. Barrett conducts research in soil geomorphology, soil-plant relationships, and environmental geography. Much of her past research relates to ecosystem degradation linked to nineteenth century logging practices in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She has focused on soil development rates and processes in acid, sandy parent materials in the upper Great Lakes region. One recent project was an investigation of soil development on a series of strand plain beach ridges in northern Michigan. Currently, she is exploring the use of a field-portable spectrophotometer to measure soil color, which can be used to characterize soil development northern Michigan soils. She has also recently begun a multiyear project to study the rates and processes in which soil organic carbon accumulates in the B horizons of sandy soils in the Great Lakes area. Other on-going research projects use data from the Government Land Office surveys of the nineteenth century to study forest-site relationships as they were around the time of European settlement, in both northern Michigan and in the Black Swamp region of northwestern Ohio.