We investigate ecological dynamics of terrestrial plant communities and ecosystems, biosphere-atmosphere interactions, and mechanistic models of animal movement.
Recent analysis of terrestrial carbon dynamics in the Northeastern US have shown that the Ecosystem Demography model version 2 (ED2) can be jointly constrained against eddy-flux measurements and forest-inventory measurements to yield improvements in the accuracy of short-term and longer-term ecosystem dynamics. Building on this work, we are now incorporating novel constraints, re-optimizing the model, quantifying the value added, and developing new short and long term predictions.
In the previous work (mentioned above) the ED2 model was initialized with...
Understanding the biological processes underlying wildlife movements is critical to forecast and mitigate human-mediated impacts on individuals, and, more generally to understand the distribution and abundance of animal populations. Over the past two decades, considerable progress has been made to quantitatively characterize wildlife...
North American ecosystems are critical components of the global carbon cycle, exchanging large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases with the atmosphere. Net ecosystem exchange of CO2 between atmosphere and ecosystems (NEE) quantifies these carbon fluxes, but current continental-scale estimates contain high levels of uncertainty. Root-zone soil moisture (RZSM) and its spatial and temporal heterogeneity influences NEE and can contribute a large amount...