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.

Contact:

Dr. Jingfeng Xiao, Research Professor

E-mail: j.xiao at unh dot edu

Update in January, 2024:

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.

Update in August, 2022:

We gap-filled, partitioned flux data for nearly 300 AmeriFlux and NEON sites. The gaps of the meteorological data were filled with ERA5-Land reanalysis data, and the flux measurements were gap-filled and partitioned using standardized procedures. The data cover the period from the early 1990s to 2021. The data can be downloaded from our Global Ecology Data Repository.

Highlights on recent papers: (* indicates advisees)

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)

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]

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]

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)

Li, X.*, Xiao, J., Fisher, J.B., Baldocchi, D.D. (2021) ECOSTRESS estimates gross primary production with fine spatial resolution for different times of day from the International Space Station. Remote Sensing of Environment, 258, 112360. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112360. [PDF]

 

Group news:

2023:

September:

NCAR Climate Data Guide publishes an Expert Developer Guide on our GOSIF product, a global dataset of dataset of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence.

August:

In our Science paper published on August 11, 2023, we find that assumed increases in global ecosystem water use efficiency have stalled since 2001 due to rising vapor pressure deficit, which offsets CO2 fertilization and depresses photosynthesis but enhances evapotranspiration. [Free full text in PDF] (Highlighted by Science on the very top of its homepage)

Xing Li, a former group member, published a nice paper in Science Advances: New-generation geostationary satellite reveals widespread midday depression in dryland photosynthesis during the 2020 western U.S. heatwave. [PDF]

Yue Chang, a former group member, published a nice paper in Sustainable Cities and Society: Monitoring diurnal dynamics of surface urban heat island for urban agglomerations using ECOSTRESS land surface temperature observations. [PDF]

July:

Erin's paper came out in Remote Sensing of Environment: Structural and species diversity explain aboveground carbon storage in forests across the United States: evidence from GEDI and forest inventory data. [PDF]

May:

A Changing Estuary Lined With Red (by NASA Earth Observatory) covers papers on red beaches including our paper in Ecosphere in 2018 (Human activities accelerated the degradation of saline seepweed red beaches by amplifying top-down and bottom-up forces).

A new vegetation phenology dataset in northern terrestrial ecosystems is published in Scientific Data by Dr. Jing Fang et al. Based on our GOSIF GPP data, this phenology dataset consists of start, end, and length of growing season (SOS, EOS, LOS) (0.05-deg; 2001-2020). [PDF]

Our new paper just came out in Science Advances: Persistent and enhanced carbon sequestration capacity of alpine grasslands on the Earth’s Third Pole. Our research found that carbon sequestration capacity of alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau has undergone persistent enhancement under a warmer and wetter climate. [PDF]

2022:

December:

Erin, Jingfeng, and collaborators (Jeff Atkins, Qinfeng Guo) convened/chaired a session on forest structural diversity and ecosystem fucntions at AGU. Jingfeng presented on the long overdue gap-filld, partitioned AmeriFlux dataset and diurnal variations of urban heat island and also convened/chaired a session on upscaling of networked observations using machine learning and modeling with collaborators Yiqi Luo, Stefan Metzger.

November:

A new postdoctoral research scientist, Henrique Duarte, joined our group. He will simulate future forest ecosystem dynamics for the eastern U.S. Henrique will work closely with scientists at the Forest Service: Ge Sun, Steve McNulty, John Kim.

October:

Jingfeng gave a talk on elucidating the relationship between solar-induced fluorescence and gross primary production with TROPOMI data at the USCCC Annual Meeting.

Jingfeng gave a talk on towards benchmarking and improving Earth System Models on the UNH-DOE National Lab Day.

A new postdoctoral research scientist, Jingyi Bu, joined our group. She will study ecosystem functioning and processes with state-of-the-art satellite data.

August:

Erin presented our new results on impacts of structural and biological diversity on aboveground carbon storage in temperate forests based on GEDI and forest inventory data at the ESA and CSEE Joint Meeting in Montreal, Canada.

We gap-filled, partitioned flux data for nearly 300 AmeriFlux and NEON sites. The gaps of the meteorological data were filled with ERA5-Land reanalysis data, and the flux measurements were gap-filled and partitioned using standardized procedures. The data cover the period from the early 1990s to 2021. If you are interested in using the data, feel free to contact the PI.

Jingfeng gave an invited seminar on Remote Sensing of Diurnal Variations in Ecosystem Processes at Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Xi'an Jiaotong University.

May:

Our new paper led by Dr. Baolin Xue is published in Water Resources Research: Divergent hydrological responses to forest expansion in dry and wet basins of China: Implications for future afforestation planning. [PDF]

Our new paper led by Dr. Decheng Zhou is published in Earth's Future: Urbanization contributes little to global warming but substantially intensifies local and regional land surface warming. [PDF]

April:

Jingfeng gave an invited seminar on understanding photosynthesis from ecosystems to the globe at Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut on April 15, 2022.

February:

Yue's new paper came out today. We combined data from GOES-R and ECOSTRESS to explore the diurnal variations of surface urban heat island and thermal differentiation among various land covers over the Boston Metropolitan Area. Both GOES-R and ECOSTRESS have diurnal sampling capability. We take advantage of the strengths of the geostationary satellite (high-frequency observations within each day/night) and ECOSTRESS (high spatial resolution). [PDF]

Our new paper is published in Science of the Total Environment. Our findings show that daytime and nighttime warming has no opposite effects on vegetation phenology and productivity in the northern hemisphere, and properly dealing with the multicollinearity problem is critical for understanding the effects of asymmetric warming on vegetation activity.

January:

Our global, fine-resolution SIF (GOSIF) and GPP (GOSIF GPP) products released in 2019 have been used by numerous scientists around the world and have led to ~60 journal articles to date. These articles are on various topics such as productivity, carbon cycle, phenology, drought, and model evaluation.

 

More news

 

Prospective graduate students and postdocs (and visiting students or scholars):

Our group may have positions open for highly-motivated and productive graduate students or postdocs. Please contact me if you are interested. We also host highly-motivated visiting students or scholars.

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