Research Topics

Shelby McClelland’s work centers on understanding how agricultural land use and management contributes to global change. She focuses on how food production and consumption, particularly of animal-derived foods, drive greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. She uses field experiments and computational science methods, such as ecosystem modeling and machine learning, to investigate how agriculture impacts terrestrial carbon and nitrogen cycling from local to global scales. McClelland’s research quantifies the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of alternative land management practices, but also the secondary effects of these interventions on food security and biodiversity. Her teaching interests include food production, soil biogeochemistry, and climate change.

She received her Bachelor of Science in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University in 2014 and her Ph.D. in Ecology from Colorado State University in 2021. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University and, most recently, at New York University in the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection.