Sharon Billings

Dr. Billings joined KU’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology in 2003. She is an ecosystem ecologist with interests that include biogeochemistry, soil organic matter dynamics, stable isotope ecology, and climate change. 

She works at the interface of the biotic and abiotic worlds, trying to understand how vegetation and microbes both respond to and shape the chemical and physical environment across space and time. Her research invokes tools from a wide range of disciplines, including ecosystem ecology, ecophysiology, microbial ecology and soil science, and she is known nationally and internationally for working across disciplines to understand how whole systems – terrestrial ecosystems in a diversity of biomes – function and respond to environmental change. 

Dr. Billings is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and was awarded KU’s Olin Petefish Award in 2021 and the Byron A. Alexander Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2022.

Learn more about Sharon Billings on the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research website.