Global Ecology Group
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About our group

Our research is motivated by the compelling need to understand how climate change impacts ecosystems and society and how to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We strive to address these questions and advance sustainability by combining in-situ measurements, remote sensing, machine learning/AI, and Earth system modeling.

Update in May, 2024:

Our global, OCO-2 based SIF product (GOSIF) and GPP product (GOSIF GPP) have been extended to 2023. Both products (0.05-deg; 8-day, monthly, & annual; 2000-2023) can be downloaded from Global Ecology Data Repository. Since 2019, they have been used in ~270 journal articles.

Highlights on recent research articles:

Lu, W.*, Xiao, J., Gao, H., Jia, Q., Li, Z., Liang, J., Xing, Q., Mao, D., Li, H., Chu, X., Chen, H., Guo, H., Han, G., Zhao, B., Chen, L., Lai, D.Y.F., Liu, S., Lin G. (2024) Carbon fluxes of China’s coastal wetlands and impacts of reclamation and restoration. Global Change Biology, 30, e17280. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17280. [PDF]

Li, F., Xiao, J., Chen, J., Ballantyne, A., Jin, K., Li, B., Abraha, M., John, R. (2023) Global water use efficiency saturation due to increased vapor pressure deficit. Science, 381, 672-677. DOI: 10.1126/science.adf5041. [Free full text in PDF] (Highlighted by Science on the very top of its homepage)

Crockett, E.T.H.*, Atkins, J.W., Guo, Q., Sun, G., Potter, K.M., Ollinger,S., Silva, C.A., Tang, H., Woodall, C.W., Holgerson, J., Xiao, J. (2023) Structural and species diversity explain aboveground carbon storage in forests across the United States: evidence from GEDI and forest inventory data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 295, 113703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113703. [PDF]

Wang, Y., Xiao, J., Ma, Y., Ding, J., Chen, X., Ding, Z., Luo, Y. (2023) Persistent and enhanced carbon sequestration capacity of alpine grasslands on the Earth’s Third Pole. Science Advances, 9, eade6875. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ade6875. [PDF]

Li, X.*, Xiao, J. (2022) TROPOMI observations allow for robust exploration of the relationship between solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and terrestrial gross primary production. Remote Sensing of Environment, 268, 112748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112748. [PDF]

Chang, Y.*, Xiao, J., Li, X., Middel, A., Zhang, Y., Gu, Z., Wu, Y., He, S. (2021) Exploring diurnal thermal variations in urban local climate zones with ECOSTRESS land surface temperature data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 263, 112544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112544. [PDF] (Highlighted by LP DAAC, USGS)

Wang, X.*, Xiao, J., Li, X., Cheng, G., Ma, M., Zhu, G., Arain, M.A., Black, T.A., Jassal, R.S. (2019) No trends in spring and autumn phenology during the global warming hiatus. Nature Communications, 10:2389, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10235-8. [PDF]

Group news:

2024:

October:

Our work is featured by USDA Forest Service: The Future of Water: A New Tool Helps Show the Relationship Between Climate, Plants, and Water

Our projections of future water yield with climate and vegetation change for each HUC-8 watershed in the CONUS (2008-2099) are available for visualization online: https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/5055d33b5553470c960f5648f2077ee9.

September:

Jingfeng and collaborators published a paper in Journal of Forestry: Do Experimental Forests and Ranges of the southeastern United States represent the climate, ecosystem structure, and ecosystem functions of the region? [PDF]

Our collaboration with Dr. John Kim at USDA Forest Service has led to the funding of a two-year project: Projecting Future Net Primary Productivity and Vegetation Shifts in Alaska Using a Dynamic Vegetation Model Under Climate Change Scenarios ($339,215). Henrique will work on this project starting from March 2025.

August:

Jingfeng presented research results at the 11th International Carbon Dioxide Conference (ICDC) in Manaus, Brazil.

Henrique's paper titled Climate and vegetation change impacts on future conterminous United States water yield is published in Journal of Hydrology. [PDF]. The MC2 projections of potential vegetation (vegetation type and LAI) and WaSSI projections of water yield, evapotranspiration (ET), and soil moisture for the CONUS, and the adapted WaSSI model code can be downloaded from our data depository.

Jingfeng gave a talk at the USCCC Annual Meeting. The title of the tlak is: Towards understanding diurnal cycling of ecosystem processes acros the globe.

June:

Our collaborator Dr. Junjie Liu led a nice paper in Science Advances: The reduced net carbon uptake over northern hemisphere land causes the close-to-normal CO2 growth rate in 2021 La Niña. Our GOSIF GPP product contributed to this work. [PDF].

May:

Our global, OCO-2 based SIF product (GOSIF) and GPP product (GOSIF GPP) have been extended to 2023. Both products (0.05-deg; 8-day, monthly, & annual; 2000-2023) can be downloaded from Global Ecology Data Repository. Since 2019, they have been used in ~270 journal articles.

April:

Our collaborators Drs. Shengli Tao and Zuirui Ao led a paper in Science. We find that among 82 major cities across China, 45% are subsiding >3 mm per year, and 16% are subsiding >10 mm per year. The sinking of cities is likely due to groundwater withdrawal and building weight. [PDF]

Weizhi, a former visiting scholar, published a nice synthesis study on carbon fluxes of China’s coastal wetlands and impacts of reclamation and restoration in Global Change Biology. [PDF]

Jingfeng gave an invited talk on monitoring vegetation phenology using solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence at the International Assocation of Landscape Ecology-North America (IALE-NA) annual meeting in Oklahoma City.

March:

Jingyi published a paper on dryland evapotranspiration estimation with remote sensing solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence in Remote Sensing of Environment [PDF]. This is mainly based on her PhD work.

January:

Our Machine learning and FLUXNET based Carbon and Water Fluxes (MF-CW) product is available online. MF-CW is a 0.5-degree gross primary production (GPP), evapotranspiration (ET), and water use efficiency (WUE) product for the globe (1982-2016) and is upscaled from FLUXNET observations. The data can be downloaded from our Global Ecology Data Repository.

 

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Prospective graduate students, postdocs, and visiting students or scholars:

Our group may have positions open for highly-motivated and productive graduate students or postdocs. We also host highly-motivated visiting students or scholars.

Highlights on recent perspective and review articles:

Xiao, J., Fisher, J.B., Hashimoto, H., Ichii, K., Parazoo, N.C. (2021) Emerging satellite observations for diurnal cycling of ecosystem processes. Nature Plants, 7, 877-887. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00952-8. [PDF] [view-only version]

Xiao, J., Chevallier, F., Gomez, C., Guanter, L., Hicke, J.A., Huete, A.R., Ichii, K., Ni, W., Pang, Y., Rahman, A.F., Sun, G., Yuan, W., Zhang, L., Zhang, X. (2019) Remote sensing of the terrestrial carbon cycle: A review of advances over 50 years. Remote Sensing of Environment, 233, 111383. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2019.111383. [PDF]

Zhou, D., Xiao, J., Bonafoni, S., Berger, C., Deilami, K., Zhou, Y., Frolking, S., Yao, R., Qiao, Z., Sobrino, J.A. (2019) Satellite remote sensing of surface urban heat islands: Progress, challenges, and perspectives. Remote Sensing, 2019, 11, 48; doi:10.3390/rs11010048. [PDF]

Special issues:

Vegetation monitoring with geostationary satellite observations, Remote Sensing of Environment, Guest Editors: Benjamin Dechant, Paul Stoy, Kazuhito Ichii, Jingfeng Xiao, Weile Wang

 

Carbon flux, water use and surface energy balance of forest plantations, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Guest Editors: Xiaojuan Tong, Jingfeng Xiao, M. Altaf Arain

 

Impacts of Extreme Climate Events and Disturbances on Carbon Dynamics, Biogeosciences, Guest Editors: J. Xiao, S. Liu, P. Stoy

 

Advances in Upscaling of Eddy Covariance Measurements of Carbon and Water Fluxes, Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences, Guest Editors: J. Xiao, K.J. Davis, M. Reichestein, J.Chen