Water-carbon coupling in tropical ecosystems

Despite exhibiting among the largest water and carbon fluxes on earth, tropical ecosystems are generally under-studied relative to those in the mid-latitudes. We are particularly interested in the wet tropics across the under-studied old-world continents, e.g. African and Asian tropical ecosystems. In past work, we have focused on understanding the seasonal variability of water uptake and evapotranspiration in the Congo river basin to understand seasonal variability in plant water uptake and understand how changing precipitation patterns and land-use change are affecting the water cycle in the basin. We also study the interplay between anthropogenic hydrologic change (e.g. canal building and restoration), land use change, and fire in peatlands in Insular Southeast Asia, since Southeast peat fires emit globally significant amounts of carbon. For each of these studies, we have used remote sensing to build new datasets to help answer our scientific questions.