Elizabeth M. Bach
Tracks how soil food webs, aggregate stability, and carbon recover across decades of tallgrass prairie restoration.
The record
- Standing
- active practice
- Based
- The Nature Conservancy, Nachusa Grasslands · United States
- Focus area
- Conservation
- Works on
- prairie restoration, soil aggregate recovery, soil biodiversity, bison grazing, prescribed fire.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Ecosystem restoration scientist at The Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois (PhD, Iowa State). Former executive director of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative. Her 2021 synthesis with Bill Kleiman summarized 20 years of prairie plantings, and she coordinates research on fire, bison reintroduction, and belowground recovery, noting full soil carbon recovery to remnant levels may take 150 to 300 years.
The timescale is the finding, and it resists the usual framing: her Nachusa work suggests full recovery of prairie soil carbon to remnant levels may take between 150 and 300 years.
Where to read them
- Elizabeth M. Bach — lab or personal site
- The Nature Conservancy, Nachusa Grasslands — the organisation
- Bach & Kleiman (2021) Twenty years of tallgrass prairie restoration in northern Illinois
- Chakravorty, Harrington & Bach (2024) bison grazing and plant diversity
- Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (former ED)
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.