Margaret Torn is an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory known for her research on carbon cycling, especially with respect to the interactions between soils and the atmosphere.
In 1998, she joined the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and was promoted to senior scientist in 2013.
In 2017, Torn was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union who cited her as follows:[4]For fundamental contributions to understanding soil carbon stabilization and sustained leadership in quantifying feedbacks between the carbon cycle and climateTorn's research combines observational data and experimental manipulations to examine the impact of changing climate conditions on the carbon cycle, with a focus on the interactions between soils and atmosphere.
[5][6][7] She works on the factors controlling the release of greenhouse gases from the tundra in the north slope of Alaska,[8][9][10][11] how climate change impacts the severity of forest fires,[12] the carbon sequestered in fungi found in soils,[13] and the decomposition of black carbon using archived soil samples from Russia.
[14][15] One theme in her research is assessing the factors that govern the persistence of organic carbon in soil.