Research Interests

Dr Mushinski leads the Environmental Processes Laboratory within the School of Life Sciences.

He is interested in terrestrial biogeochemical processes, including the cycling of light elements such as carbon and nitrogen. He studies these processes to better understand how global change pressures, such as changing temperatures, altered precipitation regimes, and atmospheric deposition lead to shifts in light element cycling, and the mechanisms behind these shifts. This fundamental research aims to inform policy makers and land managers on biogeochemical feedbacks to environmental stimuli.

His previous work has taken him from plantation forests and savannas of Texas to secondary growth deciduous forests of America’s Midwest. Since relocating his work to the UK, Dr Mushinski has focused on landscape elements common throughout Britain, including agro-ecosystems, woodlands, grasslands, and urban systems. Dr Mushinski and his team are often in the field collecting soil and plant samples and making biogeochemical measurements.

Within his laboratory, Dr Mushinski utilises state-of-the-art technologies to investigate his research questions. The Environmental Processes Laboratory possess core molecular and microbiological equipment, automated colorimetric robots for measuring inorganic nutrients in soil and water, a chemiluminescence instrument and chamber system for measuring reactive gas fluxes, an isotope ratio mass spectrometer for measuring concentrations and stable isotope content of light elements in solids, liquids, and gases, and many other instruments essential for biogeochemical research.