Dialynas just finished his PhD, now he’s contributing to a national carbon cycle report

Yannis Dialynas defended his Ph.D. thesis in January and hasn’t even celebrated his graduation. Yet he’s been working on the second State of the Carbon Cycle Report’s soils chapter, contributing insight from his doctoral research on the influence of soil erosion and carbon burial on the global carbon cycle.
Yannis Dialynas defended his Ph.D. thesis in January and hasn’t even celebrated his graduation. Yet he’s been working on the second State of the Carbon Cycle Report’s soils chapter, contributing insight from his doctoral research on the influence of soil erosion and carbon burial on the global carbon cycle.

The soon-to-be-released second State of the Carbon Cycle Report includes work from some of the nation’s leading scientists — including contributions from a civil engineer who just finished his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech.

Yannis Dialynas defended his Ph.D. thesis in January and hasn’t even celebrated his graduation. Yet he’s been working on the report’s soils chapter, contributing insight from his doctoral research on the influence of soil erosion and carbon burial on the global carbon cycle.

“Being part of the second State of the Carbon Cycle Report has been a very exciting and rewarding experience,” Dialynas said. “I have been collaborating with stellar scientists in preparing part of an assessment that focuses on U.S. and North American carbon cycle stocks and fluxes, on the influence of land management practices to carbon fluxes, on implications to global-scale carbon budgets, and on potentially significant impacts to climate change.”

This report updates a previous assessment created a decade ago. It’s produced by a broad group of federal agencies working together as the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group established under the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The report will identify uncertainties and make projections to help federal agencies understand the latest carbon science and make decisions.

“My contributions focused on discussing insights from recent research findings on the critical influence of erosion on the carbon cycle,” Dialynas said. “This includes assessing the potential of soil erosion and carbon burial to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and on sources of uncertainty in estimates of the erosion-induced soil-atmosphere carbon exchange in intensively managed landscapes.”

The working group will release a draft of the report in the coming weeks for public comment and an independent review by a committee of experts selected by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Meanwhile, Dialynas has been working as a postdoctoral fellow with his Ph.D. adviser, Georgia Tech Provost Rafael Bras. Dialynas is continuing his research with funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation.