I’m Chris Black and I’m a nerd. I like gardening, homebrew, maps, trees, photography, statistics, ecology, and the Internet.

During the day I’m a doctoral candidate in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois, where I study plant roots and how they affect the carbon storage of whole ecosystems. I also have research interests in plant-environment interactions, physiological ecology, carbon cycling, root-mediated nutrient transformations, process-based modeling, and microbial ecology.

I love my job and it’s a big part of my identity, but this is a personal blog. All opinions my own, no endorsements implied, etc.