Spaceborne insights into Earth’s changing carbon cycle: a multi-scalar triptych

Anthropogenic climate change and human land use are transforming terrestrial ecosystems across the globe, fundamentally altering their function and structure and, ultimately, the contemporary carbon cycle. Understanding when, where, and how these changes have occurred, and what they mean for global biogeochemistry, remains a significant challenge that requires new remote sensing datasets and geocomputational algorithms. In this seminar, I will highlight three distinct, but related, studies of ecosystem monitoring with satellites – a multi-scalar, remote sensing triptych. First, as part of NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, I analyze over 40 TB of Landsat data to show that disturbances, such as fires and harvest, have caused a continental-scale redistribution of forest types and suppression of the carbon sink across western Canada and Alaska. Second, using an environmental monitoring network and time series of MODIS data, I monitor Boston’s urban heat island and model its biogenic carbon exchange, key components in measuring and managing urban fossil fuel emissions. Third, using archival databases and time series of Landsat remote sensing, I analyze regional-scale shifts in disturbance regimes and forest cover in California, which play key roles in California’s forest management policies for mitigating fire risk. Together, these three distinct studies demonstrate the growing potential for spaceborne remote sensing and advanced machine learning to monitor terrestrial ecosystems at a variety of scales. My developing research program leverages the growing constellation of Earth science satellites to develop insights into how the land has been transformed and how these transformations impact our understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. 

Please read more about Jonathan Wang's research on his website.

Host: Jeff Catalano

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