Jennifer Thompson (2019 – 2021): Assistant Specialist, now a PhD Student at ​​​​the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)

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Jennifer was an Assistant Specialist for the DFS CNH project on lettuce farming in the Central Coast and is researching how agricultural diversification practices affect soil microbial community and functional diversity. Jennifer’s research interests lie primarily in the intersection of plant ecology, soil science, and microbiology. Coming from a family with ties to agriculture in California and a gardener herself, she is very interested in the impacts of agricultural management on both biodiversity and ecosystem services provisioning. Jennifer is also interested in remote sensing and is working on automated approach to mapping hedgerows, riparian buffers, and other perennial farm vegetation in the central coast. Before this position at UC Berkeley, Jennifer received a BSc in Plant Sciences from UC Santa Cruz and an MSc in Applied Ecology from the Christian-Albrecths-Universität zu Kiel in Germany.