Colleen M. Iversen

About me

I am the Director of the NGEE Arctic project, a lead investigator of the Fine-Root Ecology Database (FRED), and I previously led the Belowground Tasks component of the SPRUCE project. I am also an Editor at the international plant journal New Phytologist and an elected Early Career Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, and I was a member of the inaugural cohort of ‘New Voices’ at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. I grew up exploring the fields and farms of mid-Michigan, and I received my BS at Hope College. I continued to move southward for my graduate work, receiving my MS at the University of Notre Dame and my PhD at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I see science communication as the foundation for a shared understanding of society’s future, and I have shared my scientific vision on Public Radio International’s ‘Science Friday’, and in the Alda School’s ‘Flame Challenge’, as well as in organized symposia, sessions, and workshops. For more information, visit www.colleeniversen.com and https://colleeniversen.ornl.gov. 

Recent publications of interest

Please see http://www.colleeniversen.com/publications.html for more publications!

Berner LT, Orndahl KM, Rose M, Tamstorf M, Arndal MF, Alexander HD, Humphreys ER, Loranty MM, Ludwig SM, Nyman J, Juutinen S, Aurela M, Happonen K, Mikola J, Mack MC, Vankoughnett MR, Iversen CM, Salmon VG, Yang D, Kumar J, Grogan P, Danby RK, Scott NA, Olofsson J, Siewert MB, Deschamps L, Levesque E, Maire V, Morneault A, Gauthier G, Gignac C, Boudreau S, Gaspard A, Kholodov A, Bret-Harte MS, Greaves HE, Walker D, Gregory FM, Michelsen A, Kumpula T, Villoslada M, Ylanne H, Luoto M, Virtanen T, Forbes BC, Holzel N, Epstein H, Heim RJ, Bunn A, Holmes RM, Hung JKY, Natali SM, Virkkala A, Goetz SJ. 2024. The arctic plant aboveground biomass synthesis dataset. Scientific Data 11: 305.

Duchesneau K, Defrenne CE, Petro C, Malhotra A, Moore JAM, Childs J, Hanson PJ, Iversen CM, Kostka JE. 2024. Responses of vascular plant fine roots and associated microbial communities to whole-ecosystem warming and elevated CO2 in northern peatlands. New Phytologist 242: 1333–1347.

Norby RJ, Warren JM, Iversen CM, Walker AP, Childs J. 2024. Getting allometry right at the Oak Ridge Free-Air CO2 Enrichment experiment: Old problems and new opportunities for global change experiments. Plants, People, Planet 6: 1480–1489. 

Seethepalli A, Ottley C, Childs J, Cope K, Fine AK, Lagergren JH, Kalluri U, Iversen CM, York LM. 2024. Divide and conquer: Using RhizoVision Explorer to aggregate data from multiple root scans using image concatenation and statistical methods. New Phytologist, early view.

​Iversen CM, Latimer J, Brice DJ, Childs J, Vander Stel HM, Graham J, Griffiths N, Malhotra A, Norby RJ, Olehieser K, Phillips J, Salmon VG, Sebestyen SD, Yang X, Hanson PJ. 2023. Whole-ecosystem warming increases plant-available nitrogen and phosphorus in the SPRUCE bog. Ecosystems 26: 86-113. Highlighted here ​by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science!

Wang B, McCormack ML, Ricciuto D, Yang X, Iversen CM. 2023. Embracing fine-root system complexity to improve the predictive understanding of ecosystem functioning. Global Change Biology 29: 2871 – 2885. See a commentary of Bin’s paper here!

Weber S, Iversen CM. 2023. How deep should we go to understand roots at the top of the world? New Phytologist, Early View. This was a Commentary on the very cool paper by Blume-Werry et al. 2023 on predicting Arctic rooting depth distribution. 

Weigelt A, Mommer L, Andraczek K, Iversen CM, Bergmann J, Bruelheide H, Freschet GT, Guerrero-Ramírez NR, Kattge J, Kuyper TW, Laughlin DC, Meier IC, van der Plas F, Poorter H, Roumet C, van Ruijven J, Maria Sabatini F, Semchenko M, Sweeney CJ, Valverde-Barrantes OJ, York LM, McCormack ML. 2023. The importance of trait selection in ecology. Nature (Matters Arising), 618: E29-E30. 

Defrenne CE, Childs J,  Fernandez CW, Taggart M,  Nettles WR, Allen MF,  Hanson PJ, Iversen CM. 2021. High‐resolution minirhizotrons advance our understanding of root‐fungal dynamics in an experimentally warmed peatland. Plants People Planet 3: 640 – 652. Part of a Special Issue on Mycorrhizas for a Changing World. 

Freschet GT, Pagès L, Iversen CM, et al. 2021. A starting guide to root ecology: strengthening ecological concepts and standardizing root classification, sampling, processing and trait measurements. New Phytologist 232: 973 – 1122.

Iversen CM, McCormack ML. 2021. Filling gaps in our understanding of belowground plant traits across the world: An introduction to a Virtual Issue. New Phytologist 231: 2097 – 2103. This is an introduction to a Virtual Special Issue that highlights new belowground understanding gained from more than 40 awesome papers published in New Phytologist over just the last 2 years! 

Weigelt A, Mommer L, Andraczek K, Iversen CM, et al. 2021. An integrated framework of plant form and function: The belowground perspective. New Phytologist 232: 42 – 59. 

Bergman J, Weigelt A, van der Plas F, Laughlin DC, Kuyper TW, Guerrero-Ramirez N, Valverde-Barrantes OJ, Bruelheide H, Freschet GT, Iversen CM et al. 2020. The fungal collaboration gradient dominates the root economics space in plants. Science Advances 6: eaba3756. 

Iversen CM, Bolton WR, Rogers A, Wilson CJ, Wullschleger SD. 2020. Building a culture of safety and trust in team science. Eos 101. 

Malhotra A, Brice D, Childs J, Graham JD, Hobbie EA, Vander Stel H, Feron SC, Hanson PJ, Iversen CM. 2020. Peatland warming strongly increases fine-root growth. PNAS 117: 17627 – 17634. Highlighted by Science Magazine, and also here by ORNL!

Iversen CM. 2019. New Phytologist Associate Editor Profile. New Phytologist 223: 530 – 531. 

Iversen CM, Childs J, Norby RJ, Ontl TA, Kolka RK, Brice DJ, McFarlane KJ, Hanson PJ. 2018. Fine-root growth in a forested bog is seasonally dynamic, but shallowly distributed in nutrient-poor peat. Plant and Soil 424: 123-143.

Iversen CM, McCormack ML, Powell AS, Blackwood CB, Freschet GT, Kattge J, Roumet C, Stover DB, Soudzilovskaia NA, Valverde-Barrantes OJ, van Bodegom PM, Violle C. 2017. Viewpoints: A global Fine-Root Ecology Database to address belowground challenges in plant ecology. New Phytologist 215: 15-26.

Iversen CM, Sloan VL, Sullivan PF, Euskirchen ES, McGuire AD, Norby RJ, Walker AP, Warren JM, Wullschleger SD. 2015. The unseen iceberg: Plant roots in arctic tundra (Tansley Review). New Phytologist 205: 34-58.

McCormack ML, Dickie IA, Eissenstat DM, Fahey TJ, Fernandez CW, Guo D, Helmisaari H-S, Hobbie EA, Iversen CM, et al. 2015. Redefining fine roots improves understanding of below-ground contributions to terrestrial biosphere processes (Tansley Review). New Phytologist 207: 505-518.