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The paper is the first to derive data-driven ET estimates at basin scale by using an inverted water balance in combination with GRACE total water storage data. Precipitation inputs are determined by an optimal combination of precipitation products based on triple collocation. The paper discusses the surprising peak in ET during the smaller MAM wet season and the surprising lack of a trend in ET across the study period despite trends in climatic drivers. You can find it here.

Greg's recent paper shows that the CARDAMOM global carbon cycle model-data fusion system - which avoids parameter uncertainty by optimizing ecosystem parameters at each location but has a relatively simple structure to avoid equifinality - is able to capture NEP seasonal and interannual dynamics as well as TRENDY and CMIP5 can (to within their uncertainty). You can read it here.

Alex has won an NSF CAREER grant from the Terrestrial Ecosystems program at NSF. The intellectual thrust of this five year grant will be to use CARDAMOM to study spatial patters in ecosystem parameters. That is, can more informative alternatives to plant functional types be derived across the globe from remote sensing data? The project will consider several ecosystem parameters, but particularly consider those related to heterotrophic respiration;

You can read this article here while it is in review. Greg and Alex contributed to this analysis. This paper uses CARDAMOM to demonstrate that lagged effects (e.g. changes in carbon pool sizes due to climate in previous years) have a greater effect on interannual variability in terrestrial carbon fluxes than direct responses to climate (which are much more commonly studied) do.

As one of the associate editors for the Data-driven Climate Sciences section of Frontiers in Big Data, Alex is co-editing a research topic (virtual special issue) on 'Big Data for understanding tropical ecosystem services' together with Kyle Davis and Rafael Schmitt. We are interested in a wide variety of topics related to using data to better understand ecosystem service variability in the sparsely observed tropics. Papers should use at least two different types of data. More details on the special issue can be found here. Abstracts are due March 1st, 2020. 

The paper shows that, contrary to popular wisdom, vegetation density is sufficiently low (likely due to land use change) in many Insular Southeast Asian peatlands to allow for soil moisture retrieval using SMAP. SMAP soil moisture carries information about burned area with as much as 30 days lag time, and provides information not contained in commonly-used precipitation metrics, because soil moisture is also influenced by anthropogenic canal-building in the area. The paper can be found here. Stanford's press release about the article can be found here

Check out Nathan's and Krishna's talks, and the sessions on Vegetation Optical Depth!

Researchers from several groups spent a week discussing opportunities and results with the CARDAMOM model-data fusion system

The paper can be found here. It inverts the carbon balance using remote sensing data to constrain heterotrophic respiration.

The paper explores how variations in leaf water potential due to factors such as leaf area index and vapor pressure deficit. Based on modelling and FLUXNET results, these factors can disrupt the relationship between apparent isohydricity and stomatal function across sites, but not within a site. You can find the paper here.

Please submit your abstract here. The conference will be in San Diego from August 26-29. This will be a great way to bring together an intimate gathering of a small group of people interested in carbon-climate feedbacks. Alex is on the program committee.

We also presented a poster on Mike Burnett's work on ET in the Congo!

Alex collaborated on this paper led by Andrew Feldman (MIT). It can be found here

Welcome, Natan and Caroline!

Guadalupe is a rising senior at University of Texas - El Paso. She will be working with Nathan to characterize drainage patterns from anthropogenic canals in Insular Southeast Asia. Welcome, Guadalupe! 

SMAP MT-DCA data are now available via anonymous ftp. Instructions are on the datasets page.

Yanlan is currently a PhD student at Duke. She'll be working on comparing ET model performance between approaches with and without plant hydraulics. Welcome, Yanlan!

You can find it here

Welcome, Greg! Greg completed his PhD with Abby Swann at the University of Washington and will be working on understanding on the drought response of tropical carbon fluxes using CARDAMOM and other tools. 

The spotlight article can be found here.

You can find it here

You can find it here

Congratulations and thanks for working with us, Chris. We'll miss you!

You can find it here. We are working to make the data publicly available, which should be soon. In the mean-time, please get in touch if you are interested!

You can find it here.