Welcome

The Global Ecology Lab conducts research on the structure, function and dynamics of ecological systems, and their interactions in the Earth system. Our primary approach is to combine data and mathematics to develop models for quantifying patterns and predicting future dynamics. Current research is focused on the development and application of models to address issues such as: terrestrial carbon balance, the sustainability of land-use practices, the effects of disturbances on ecosystem structure and function, and interactions between the biosphere, hydrosphere, ands atmosphere.

Lab News

Spring 2024

Lei Ma was recognized as one of the top 10 reviewers for the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (JAG) for 2023. Read more about it here.

Lab members George Hurtt and Lei Ma led new carbon cycle modeling that was instrumental in the America Is All In report. Read more here.

Lab members George Hurtt, Lei Ma and Quan Shen, in collaboration with former lab members Frances Marie Panday and Rachel Lamb from Maryland Department of the Environment, contributed to “Growing 5 Million Trees in Maryland Progress Report 2021-2023.” Read more about it here.

Lab members George Hurtt, Lei Ma, and Quan Shen, contributed to the modeling of the forestry and land use sector in the Maryland Department of the Environment's recently released Maryland's Climate Pollution Reduction Plan. Read more about it here

Lei Ma led a proposal as PI with George Hurtt entitled "Leveraging GEDI observations and mechanistic ecosystem modeling to quantify forest regrowth under a changing climate" that was selected for the NASA GEDI Competed Science Team. Read more about the Competed Science Teams here.

Fall 2023

Louise Chini, George Hurtt, and Lei Ma co-authored the newly released Global Carbon Budget 2023 Report. Read more about it here.

George Hurtt and Lei Ma co-authored an article entitled High-Fidelity Deep Approximation of Ecosystem Simulation over Long-Term at Large Scale in Association for Computing Machinery.

George Hurtt co-authored an article entitled Conservation policies and management in the Ukrainian Emerald Network have maintained reforestation rate despite the war in Communications Earth and Environment.

Louise Chini co-authored an article entitled The anthropogenic imprint on temperate and boreal forest demography and carbon turnover in Global Ecology and Biogeography.

Louise Chini co-authored a chapter on Land Cover and Land-Use Change in the Fifth National Climate Assessment

Lab members Louise Chini, George Hurtt, Jennifer Kennedy, Lei Ma and Quan Shen will be attending this year's AGU Conference in San Francisco. Louise will be presenting Dec 11th on GC11C-04 Global Land-Use Forcing Datasets for Carbon/Climate Models and Biodiversity Studies. George will be presenting Dec 12th on Beyond MRV: Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Modeling to Meet Stakeholder Needs for Forest Carbon Monitoring, Planning, and Assessment. Jennifer will be presenting on Dec 11th on GC14B-08 Physical and Socioeconomic Factors Affecting Cropland Shifts Under Climate Change. Lei will be presenting on Dec 14th on Afforestation/reforestation envelopes of carbon sequestration. Quan will be presenting on Dec 13th on Linking Top-down and Bottom-up Estimates on Forest Carbon Flux: A Case Study in Maryland, USA. More information on their participation can be found here.

The department hosted its second annual GIS Day Open House for local high school students. The day was run and organized by lab members George Hurtt and Valeria Morales. In addition, Michael Howerton presented a lightning talk and participated in the student panel.

George Hurtt presented at the annual GEDI Science Team Meeting on Ecosystem Modeling.

George Hurtt led the annual NASA CMS Science Team Meeting in Pasadena, CA as Science Team Leader. Lab members Louise Chini, Ralph Dubayah, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Valeria Morales and Quan Shen were also in attendance.

GEOG launched a high school internship program this year to cultivate future leaders. This initiative was spearheaded by George Hurtt along with Valeria Morales. Read more about it here.

NASA's Earth Observatory published an article entitled The Best Places to Plant Trees in Maryland. Contributions to this research came from current and former lab members Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma and Marie Panday.

Summer 2023

Louise Chini was appointed to be a member of the Climate Forcing Task Team, and ScenarioMIP for CMIP7.

Lei Ma was promoted to Assistant Research Professor, congratulations!

George Hurtt and Lei Ma co-authored the Maryland's Climate Pathways Report

Spring 2023

George Hurtt, Lei Ma and Quan Shen attended the NASA Joint Science Workshop which took place May 8th-12th at The Hotel in College Park. George gave an invited, plenary presentation entitled "NASA Carbon Monitoring System Research and Applications – How CMS has developed application ready products in support of stakeholders", Lei presented a poster entitled "Spatial heterogeneity of global forest aboveground carbon stocks and fluxes constrained by spaceborne lidar data and mechanistic modeling", and Quan presented a poster entitled "Remote Sensing for Forest Dynamics and Its Implications for Tree Outside Forest over Maryland, U.S.A.". Find all presentations and posters here.

Katelyn Kopp won the Outstanding Undergraduate TA award, and Lei Ma won the Outstanding Postdoc award at this year's Departmental Award Ceremony. Congrats!

Jennifer Kennedy led a paper, along with co-authors George Hurtt, Louise Chini and Lei Ma, entitled Changing cropland in changing climates: quantifying two decades of global cropland changes in Environmental Research Letters.

George Hurtt attended and presented at the AEOIP workshop in Salt Lake City, Utah April 25-27, 2023. Find meeting details and recordings here.

Louise Chini was awarded an indvidual Grand Challenges project grant in the category of Climate Change and the Environment. Read more about it here.

George Hurtt and Rachel Lamb joined the Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain in celebrating the state's tree-planting initiative program by participating in an Earth Day tree planting event. Read more about it here.

Lei Ma was awarded the Dean's Research Initiative project for proposing "Mapping Tree Regrowth Using High-Resolution Aerial Imagery and Deep Learning." Read more about it here.

George Hurtt gave a seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology entitled Beyond MRV: The development and application of next generation forest carbon monitoring and modeling system for policy support. Watch it here.

Lei Ma led a paper, along with co-authors George Hurtt, Rachel Lamb, Louise Chini, Ralph Dubayah and John Armston entitled Spatial heterogeneity of global forest aboveground carbon stocks and fluxes constrained by spaceborne lidar data and mechanistic modeling in Global Change Biology.

George Hurtt gave an invited presentation to the National Academy Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space entitled "Monitoring the Carbon Cycle".

Louise Chini co-authored a paper entitled The drivers and impacts of Amazon forest degradation published in Science.

Louise Chini has been named a member of the Climate Forcings Task Team of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. More information found here.

Lei Ma was selected by Early Career Scholars for an Inclusive Stocktake (ECSIS) program. Read more about it here.

Fall 2022

Lab members Louise Chini, George Hurtt, Jennifer Kennedy, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Marie Panday, and Quan Shen participated at the annual fall AGU meeting in Chicago, IL. See more information about presentations here.

George Hurtt and Lei Ma attended the GEDI Science Team Meeting hosted by Ralph Dubayah. George had the opportunity to present on Ecosystem Modeling.

George Hurtt presented at a COP27 side event organized by the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and Universities Space Research Association (USRA), titled "New Generation of Greenhouse Gas Remote Sensing Satellites for Contribution to the Paris Agreement". Watch the COP27 Side Event here and read more about it here

George Hurtt was recognized as a highly cited researcher by Clarivate. Congratulations! Check out others in the department who were also recognized.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt co-authored the newly released Global Carbon Budget Report. Read more about it here.

A new report published by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) shares that the state is on track to meet its 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) targets—and is the first in the nation to use a remote-sensing based system for measuring how much carbon is stored in forests. The system in use was led by Professor George Hurtt.

Students and faculty from the Campus Forest Carbon Project played a major role in campus efforts to progress forest carbon monitoring. Some of the participants include Michael Howerton, George Hurtt, Katelyn Kopp, Rachel Lamb, and Marie Panday. Read more about it here.

George Hurtt led the annual NASA CMS Science Team Meeting, at the AGU Headquarters in Washington, DC, as Science Team Leader. Lab members Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma and Valeria Morales were also participants.

Quan Shen was elected Treasurer and part of the Activity/Events Coordinators for the GEOG Graduate Student Organization for 2022-2023. Congratulations!

Lei Ma virtually presented at ForestSAT2022 on the global initialization of ED with GEDI and ICESat2.

Summer 2022

The New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) has partnered with the University of Maryland and NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (led by George Hurtt) to help combat climate change. More information found here.

PhD Student Leonid Shumilo Receives NASA FINESST Award. Leonid used methodologies from George Hurtt's biogeography course to help refine his concept of agriculture velocity. Congratulations, Leonid!

GEL would like to welcome new members Anniee Fang, Michael Howerton, and Katelynn Kopp. Welcome!

The Department hosted the Inaugural Recognition Banquet for Exceptional High School Students in Geographical Sciences. This event celebrated students from Prince George's and Montgomery Counties. This event was introduced by George Hurtt and a team of GEOG members, including Valeria Morales.

Spring 2022

George Hurtt led a paper along with 20 other co-authors ranging from 12 different institutions, including current and former GEL lab members Valeria Morales and Maddie Guy, entitled The NASA Carbon Monitoring System Phase 2 synthesis: scope, findings, gaps and recommended next steps in Environmental Research Letters.

Several lab members got to participate in this year's GEOG Commencement Ceremony, which celebrated 2020-2022 grads. Rachel Lamb and Lei Ma were recognized for their Ph.D; Camille Hoffman Delett, Valeria Morales and Quan Shen were recognized for their M.S; and Maddy Albee, Marie Panday and Amelia Patterson were recognized for their B.S

Camille Hoffmam Delett won the Brian R. Melchoir Endowed Research Fund and Marie Panday won the Undergraduate Independent Research award, Highest GPA Undergraduate award for ENSP, and the James R. Anderson Award at the Departmental Awards Ceremony.

George Hurtt was ranked as a 2022 Top Scientist by Research.com, along with other GEOG researchers.

Rachel Lamb began working at the Maryland Department of the Environment.

George Hurtt and Louise Chini co-authored the newly released Global Carbon Budget report.

Marie Panday defended her undergraduate thesis, becoming the first student to receive High Honors for ENSP in GEOG. Congratulations!

George Hurtt co-authored a paper entitled Integrating remote sensing with ecology and evolution to advance biodiversity conservation published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. More information can be found here.

Haley Leslie-Bole led a presentation at the AEOIP Spring Workshop on behalf of George Hurtt, entitled "Integrating NASA and USFS Datasets for a High-Resolution Annual Forest Carbon Monitoring System"

Lei Ma led a paper, along with co-authors George Hurtt, Rachel Lamb and Louise Chini, entitiled Global evaluation of the Ecosystem Demography model (ED v3.0) in the Geoscientific Model Development.

George Hurtt co-authored a paper entitled Anthropogenic emission is the main contributor to the rise of atmospheric methane during 1993–2017 published in the National Science Review.

Fall 2021

George Hurtt led a NASA Hyperwall presentation at AGU on December 15th on NASA's Carbon Monitoring System.

Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles attended COP26 and shared "Maryland-based first of its kind technology for tracking the size and success of forests in pulling carbon pollution from the atmosphere" created throuhg a NASA funded collboration between Maryland Department of the Environment, University of Maryland, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, and the World Resources Institute.

Louise Chini, Camille Hoffman Delett, George Hurtt, Rachel Lamb, and Lei Ma will be attending and presenting at the AGU Fall Meeting happening Dec 13-17th virtually and in person in New Orleans, LA. Louise's presentation on "Temporal Precision in Land-Use Datasets for Annual Global Carbon Budgets" is on December 16th at 2:35pm CT session GC43A. Camille's presenation on "Innovating Reforestation Protocols for Carbon Markets with High-Resolution Forest Carbon Science" is on December 15th at 4pm CT session SY34A. George is charing three sessions on "Carbon Monitoring Systems Research and Applications" on December 14th at 12:45pm, 2:30pm, and 4pm CT sessions B23A, B24A and B25G. Rachel's presenations on "Meeting the need for strategic reforestation planning: high-resolution geospatial framework for future forest carbon storage and protected area expansion" and "Filling a Science-Policy Gap around Natural Climate Solutions with High-Resolution Forest Carbon Science" are on December 13th at 4:09pm and December 14th at 12:55pm CT respectively, sessions U15A and B23A. Lei's presentation on "Prototype global forest aboveground carbon monitoring system with process-based model and spaceborne lidar and optical observations" is on December 14th at 4pm CT session B25G.

George Hurtt was recognized as a highly cited researcher by Clarivate. Congratulations! Be sure to also check out the other department researchers recognized.

George Hurtt led the NASA CMS Science Team Meeting taking place Nov 16-18th. In addition, Louise Chini, Ralph Dubayah, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, and Quan Shen also attended the CMS Science Team meeing.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt co-authored the newly released Global Carbon Budget report.

George Hurtt and Lei Ma had the opportunity to attend and present on ecosystem modeling at the GEDI Science Team meeting.

George Hurtt had the opportunity to attend COP26 as a virtual observer.

Summer 2021

George Hurtt has been appointed as the Associate Chair for the department. Congratulations!!

George Hurtt has been appointed to the ERL editorial baord. Congrats, George!

Rachel Lamb led a paper, along wih co-authors Lei Ma, Ralph Dubayah, Jennifer Kennedy, and George Hurtt, entitled Geospatial assessment of the economic opportunity for reforestation in Maryland, USA in Environmental Research Letters.

Louise Chini led a paper, along with co-authors George Hurtt and Lei Ma, entitled Land-Use Harmonization Datasets for Annual Global Carbon Budgets in Earth Systems Science Data.

Spring 2021

George Hurtt was appointed Chair of the Strategic Plan Discovery, Creativity and Innovation subcommittee for the University.

Fernando Sedano led a paper, along with co-author George Hurtt and former GEL member Laura Duncanson entitled The connection between forest degradation and urban energy demand in sub-Saharan Africa: a characterization based on high-resolution remote sensing data in Environmental Research Letters.

Rachel Lamb led a paper, along with co-authors George Hurtt and Ralph Dubayah, entitled Context and future directions for integrating forest carbon into sub-national climate mitigation planning in the RGGI region of the U.S. in Environmental Research Letters.

George Hurtt was awarded a grant through the NASA ROSES 2020 A.6 Carbon Monitoring System for his project titled "High-Resolution Forest Carbon Monitoring and Modeling: Continued Prototype Development and Deployment to National and Global Scales and Science Team Lead"

Louise Chini was promoted to Associate Research Professor for the department.

The Annual Departmental Awards Ceremony was held on May 12th, 2021. Many GEL members were recognized and awarded for their amazing work this past year. Zhen Zhang won the Outstanding Postdoc Award, Lei Ma, PhD won First Place in the Excellence in Graduate Research Award, Rachel Lamb, PhD won Second Place in the Excellence in Graduate Research Award, Marie Panday won the Brian Melchoir Fund Award, and Hillary Sandborn, Camille Hoffman Delette, Maddy Albee and Marie Panday won the Undergraduate Independent Research Award. Congrats to everyone for another great year!

Lei Ma and Rachel Lamb both successfully defended their dissertations and will be graduating with their PhDs this Spring 2021. Congratulations!

Quan Shen graduated with her M.S and therefore completeing the B.S/M.S program. Congratulations, Quan!!

Welcome new lab member Valeria Morales!

Fall 2020

George Hurtt and Rachel Lamb were awarded a grant from the UMD Sustainability Fund. This $50,000 renewal grant will be used to further advance the University of Maryland’s goal to become climate neutral.

Research from a study co-authored by George Hurtt and Louise Chini was covered in an article entitled "The world is losing its big old trees" featured in The Economist

Summer 2020

Lei Ma led a paper, along with co-authors George Hurtt, Louise Chini, and former GEL members Ritvik Sahajpal and Donal O'Leary, entitled Global rules for translating land-use change (LUH2) to land-cover change for CMIP6 using GLM2 in the journal Geoscientific Model Development. More information can be found in the publications section.

Jamis Bruening was awarded a University of Maryland Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship to support his dissertation work during summer 2020. Congratulations Jamis!

Fernando Sedano led a team of researchers, including George Hurtt, Laura Duncanson, and former GEL member Ritvik Sahajpal, entitled "Monitoring intra and inter annual dynamics of forest degradation from charcoal production in Southern Africa with Sentinel – 2 imagery" in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. More information can be found in the publications section.

George Hurtt co-authored a paper entitled "Challenges in producing policy-relevant global scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services" in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. More information can be found in the publications section.

George Hurtt co-authored a paper entitled "Impact of fire and harvest on forest ecosystem services in a species‐rich area in the southern Appalachians" in the journal Ecosphere. More information can be found in the publications section.

Spring 2020

George Hurtt and Louise Chini co-authored a paper in Science Magazine entitled "Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world". More information can be found on the publications section.

Donal O'Leary graduated with his Ph.D. in Geographical Sciences on May 22nd from the University of Maryland. Congratulations to Donal and we wish you the best for your future!

The Department of Geographical Sciences held their Departmental Awards Ceremony on May 13th, 2020 where many GEL members were recognized for their hard work. Rachel Lamb won the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, Lei Ma won the Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award, Rieley Auger, Jordan Nicolette, and Hilary Sandborn won the Undergraduate Independent Research Award, and Hao Tang won the Outstanding Research Professor Award. Congrats to everyone for another great year!

Danielle Rappaport successfully defended her dissertation entitled "Long-term impacts of Amazon forest degradation on carbon stocks and animal communities: combining sound, structure, and satellite data" and will be graduating in Spring 2020. Congrats

Donal O'Leary successfully defended his dissertation entitled "The Ecological Velocity of Climate Change" and is graduating with his Ph.D. in Spring 2020. Congrats Donal and we wish you the best on your next chapter!

Donal O'Leary led a team of researchers, including GEL members Ralph Dubayah and George Hurtt, entitled "Snowmelt velocity predicts vegetation green-wave velocity in mountainous ecological systems of North America" in the journal "International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation." More information can be found in the publications section.

Lei Ma was awarded an Ann G. Wylie Semester Dissertation Fellowship for one semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. Congrats Lei!

Rachel Lamb co-authored a textbook entitled "Conservation Biology: Foundations, Concepts, Applications (3rd Edition)" for Springer Nature. The textbook should be available for purchase soon. Congrats Rachel!

George Hurtt was invited to give a talk on his CMS research at the 7th North American Carbon Program (NACP) Meeting from March 23rd through 26th in McLean, VA.

George Hurtt was invited to give a talk at the 2020 World Biodiversity Forum in Davos, Switzerland on February 27th, 2020. His talk will be part of the "Using Earth Observations to understand changes in biodiversity and ecosystem function" NASA session.

Ralph Dubayah led a team of researchers, including George Hurtt, John Armston, Hao Tang, Wenlu Qi, and Carlos Silva in publishing the GEDI mission paper entitled "The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation: High-resolution laser ranging of the Earth’s forests and topography" in Science of Remote Sensing. More information can be found in the publications section.

Donal O'Leary successfully defended his dissertation entitled "The Ecological Velocity of Climate Change" in December 2019. Congratulations to Donal on his continued success!

George Hurtt, Carlos Silva, and Rachel Lamb, along with colleagues from the World Resources Institute, Maryland's Department of Natural and Resources, and Delaware's Division of Energy and Climate, were awarded a 1-year grant by the US Climate Alliance to support high-resolution forest carbon monitoring in Maryland and Delaware. More information can be found on the Department website.

Rachel Lamb and George Hurtt receive a grant from the UMD Sustainability Fund to advance land carbon accounting on campus. Congratulations Rachel and George! More information can be found on the Department website.

Rachel Lamb was invited to serve as a member of the WRI/WBCSD Land Sector Technical Working Group. This group will develop new Greenhouse Gas Protocol standards for corporate accounting of carbon removals and land sector activities. Congratulations Rachel!

Fernando Sedano, with co-authors Ritvik Sahajpal and George Hurtt, published a paper in Environmental Research Letters entitled "Monitoring forest degradation from charcoal production with historical Landsat imagery. A case study in southern Mozambique." More information can be found in the publications section.

George Hurtt and Louise Chini were awarded a DOE grant to support ELM development for managed disturbances and time-since-disturbance for phase 2 of the E3SM project. Congrats George and Louise! More information can be found on the Department website.

Fall 2019

Suzanne Marselis successfully defended her dissertation entitled "Characterizing tree species diversity in the tropics using full-waveform lidar data" and graduated with her Ph.D. in Fall 2019. Congratulations Suzanne and we wish you the best!

GEL Members Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, John Armston, Louise Chini, Jennifer Kennedy, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Donal O'Leary, Fernando Sedano, and Hao Tang attended the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA from December 9th through December 13th. More information about their presentations can be found in the AGU Scientific Program.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt co-author "Global Carbon Budget 2019." Drs. Hurtt and Chini provided global land-use data for this study. More information can be found in the publications section.

George Hurtt led the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Science Team Meeting in La Jolla, CA from November 12th through November 14th. GEL members Hao Tang, Fernando Sedano, and Maddie Guy also attended the meeting representing various GEL CMS projects. More information about the meeting can be found at the NASA CMS website.

George Hurtt presented his Distinguished Scholar Teacher lecture "Climate Smart Land-use: The role of integrated science and policy in helping mitigate the effects of climate change and restoring ecosystem services on land" on November 7th, 2019 at the Stamp Student Union. Congratulations George for a great lecture!

Jennifer Kennedy was accepted into the 2020 cohort of the UMD Global STEWARDS Program, a graduate training fellowship funded by the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) program. Congratulations Jennifer!

Ralph Dubayah gave a keynote presentation at SilviLaser 2019 on the first glimpse of GEDI data on October 8th in Iguazu Falls, Brazil. More information about the conference can be found on the SilviLaser website.

Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, John Armston, Hao Tang, Suzanne Marselis, Carlos Silva, Wenlu Qi, Donal O'Leary, Zhen Zhang, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Jennifer Kennedy, Elisabeth Powell, and Danielle Rappaport all participated in the NASA 2019 Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting from September 23rd through 25th, presenting a range of oral talks and poster presentations.

George Hurtt was honored at the University of Maryland's 2019 Faculty and Staff Convocation for being named a 2019-2020 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. Congrats to George!

Former GEL member Steve Flanagan, along with George Hurtt, Ritvik Sahajpal, and Ralph Dubayah, published a paper in Climate entitled "Potential Transient Response of Terrestrial Vegetation and Carbon in Northern North America from Climate Change." More information can be found in the publications section.

Elisabeth Powell joins the GEL Lab as a Ph.D. student under Ralph Dubayah. Welcome Elisabeth!

Summer 2019

Former GEL member Wenli Huang, along with current GEL members Hao Tang, Ralph Dubayah, and George Hurtt, and former member Katelyn Dolan, published a paper in Environmental Research Letters entitled "High-resolution mapping of aboveground biomass for forest carbon monitoring system in the Tri-State region of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware, USA." More information can be found in the publications section.

Rachel Lamb was invited to serve on UMD's Research Council for the 2019-2020 academic year. Congratulations Rachel!

Ralph Dubayah was awarded the 2019 Helmholtz International Fellowship, recognizing his strong international research collaboration. More information can be found on the GEOG website. Congratulations Ralph!

Spring 2019

Lei Ma has passed his Dissertation Proposal Defense and advanced to candidacy this Spring. Congratulations Lei!

The Department of Geographical Sciences held their Departmental Awards on May 10th, 2019 where many GEL members were recognized for their hard work. Suzanne Marselis won the Excellence in Graduate Research Award (Jamis Bruening and Danielle Rappaport received third for the same award!), Maddie Guy and Shannon Corrigan both won the Outstanding Faculty Specialist Award, and Rachel Lamb won both the Outstanding Graduate TA Award and the O.E. Baker Award for Outstanding Academics and Service! Congrats to everyone!

George Hurtt co-authored a paper entitled "Charcoal-related forest degradation dynamics in dry African woodlands: Evidence from Mozambique" published in Applied Geography. More information can be found in the publications section.

George Hurtt was named a 2019 University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar Teacher. Congrats George!

George Hurtt led a team of authors, including GEL members Ritvik Sahajpal, Ralph Dubayah, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Donal O'Leary, and Hao Tang, in publishing their paper entitled "Beyond MRV: high-resolution forest carbon modeling for climate mitigation planning over Maryland, USA" in the journal Environmental Research Letters. More information can be found in the publications section. Congratulations to the entire team!

Rachel Lamb has been nominated as a "Terp Woman of Influence" and will be recognized by Adele's Circle of Women at an event hosted at the University of Maryland on April 16th. Congrats Rachel!

Rachel Lamb presented her talk, titled "Moving from Random to Resilient: The role of watershed governance in shaping ecological restoration across Lake Erie", at the 2019 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting on April 3rd.

Suzanne Marselis was one of three winners of the University of Maryland Graduate School 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition. She condensed her entire dissertation into a 3 minute talk, entitled “Predicting Tree Species Richness in the Tropics”, and was challenged with presenting it to a non-specialist audience. Congratulations Suzanne!

Donal O'Leary and Danielle Rappaport were each awarded the Ann G. Wylie Semester Dissertation Fellowship for one semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. This fellowship is awarded to students in the later stages of their dissertations and provides one semester of full-support. Congrats Donal and Danielle!

George Hurtt was acknowledged in an interview for his foundational work with Robert Colwell on the physical constraints on patterns of biodiversity, i.e. mid-domain effect.

In a paper accepted for publication in Environmental Research Letters, George Hurtt lead a team of researchers, including Ritvik Sahajpal, Ralph Dubayah, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Donal O'Leary, and Hao Tang from the GEL Lab, in their paper titled "Beyond MRV: High-resolution forest carbon modeling for climate mitigation planning over Maryland, USA." Congratulations to the entire team!

Rachel Lamb has been invited to present her poster “Pricing forest carbon: economic opportunities for afforestation at landowner scales” at the 2019 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington DC. The meeting’s theme is Science Transcending Boundaries.

A paper entitled "Vegetation demographics in Earth System Models: A review of progress and priorities" co-authored by George Hurtt was the most cited article in the journal Global Change Biology in 2018. Congrats George!

George Hurtt co-authors a paper titled "Taking climate model evaluation to the next level" published in Nature Climate Change. More information can be found in the publications section.

Fall 2018

Rachel Lamb and Donal O'Leary both passed their Dissertation Proposal Defense and advanced to candidacy this Fall. Congratulations Rachel and Donal!

Donal O'Leary's snowmelt timing and wildfire research was highlighted at the AGU 2018 Fall Meeting in his eLightning talk and the "The changing U.S. snowpack” press conference. More information can be found on the GEOG website.

John Armston, Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, Rachel Lamb, Lei Ma, Suzanne Marselis, Donal O'Leary, Wenlu Qi, Danielle Rappaport, Ritvik Sahajpal, and Hao Tang all presented at the AGU 2018 Fall Meeting in Washington DC. More information about their presentations can be found in AGU's Fall Meeting Scientific Program.

The GEDI instrument was successfully launched on Space-X CRS 16 on December 5th, 2018 at 1:16pm. The GEDI Science Team, lead by Ralph Dubayah, traveled to Florida to watch the launch at the Kennedy Space Center. Congratulations to the entire team! More information can be found on the GEOG website.

George Hurtt and Louise Chini co-author "Global Carbon Budget 2018." Drs. Hurtt and Chini provided global land-use data for this study. More information can be found in the publications section.

George Hurtt and Louise Chini co-author a paper inter-comparing biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios in order to project the impact of land-use and climate change on these models. More information can be found in the publications section.

Ralph Dubayah co-organized the ForestSAT 2018 conference from October 1st-5th in College Park, MD. Many GEL members presented their research through oral talks and poster presentations, including John Armston, George Hurtt, Rachel Lamb, Suzanne Marselis, Wenlu Qi, Danielle Rappaport, and Hao Tang. Congratulations to Ralph and all the presenters on a successful conference!

George Hurtt and Ralph Dubayah's work with NASA's Carbon Monitoring System was featured in an American Forests Magazine article, titled Eyes in the Sky.

George Hurtt was invited to talk at the ESA's CCI Biomass 1st User Workshop in Paris, France from September 25th-26th.

Rachel Lamb was elected as the Graduate Student Government Government Affairs Vice President. More information can be found here. Congratulations Rachel!

Summer 2018

Danielle Rappaport led a team of researchers, including Ralph Dubayah, in her paper titled "Quantifying long-term changes in carbon stocks and forest structure from Amazon forest degradation" published in Environmental Research Letters. More information can be found in the publications section.

Donal O'Leary led a team of authors in a paper based on his master's thesis work, titled "Quantifying the early snowmelt event of 2015 in the Cascade Mountains, USA by developing and validating MODIS-based snowmelt timing maps." More information can be found in the publication section.

Zhen Zhang led a team of researchers, including George Hurtt, in a paper analyzing the response of global wetland methane emissions resulting from El Niño-Southern Oscillation. More information can be found in the publication section.

George Hurtt will co-organize a special session at the ForestSAT 2018 conference held at the University of Maryland. This special session is titled "Forest Carbon MRV and Role in Future Climate Mitigation." Congrats George!

George Hurtt's session proposal "Carbon Monitoring Systems Research and Applications" has been approved for the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting held in Washington DC. Congrats George!

Donal O'Leary has been invited to give a talk at the AGU 2018 Fall Meeting. The talk is a result of winning the Outstanding Student Paper award at last year's Fall Meeting and will focus on his snow and fire research.

Spring 2018

George Hurtt co-authors paper assessing land use and land cover impacts in the Community Earth System Model. More information can be found in the publications section.

Rachel Lamb receives Best Student Presentation Award from the American Association of Geographers’ Landscape Speciality Group for her work on the socioeconomic applications of MD carbon monitoring products.

Rachel Lamb has been invited to serve as an expert judge for a data-driven climate policy debate sponsored by the Wheaton Center for Faith, Politics and Economics at Wheaton College. The debate on March 18th will center on the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of current government regulatory proposals regarding climate change.

Rachel Lamb has been awarded a 2018 Harvey Fellowship from the Mustard Seed Foundation. The Harvey Fellowship provides provides financial support to Christian students who are pursuing graduate studies at premier universities in fields considered to be underrepresented by Christians. More information can be found here. Congratulations Rachel!

Louise Chini and George Hurtt co-author a study quantifying the effects of land cover conversion uncertainty on the global carbon and climate system, titled "Quantifying the Effects of Historical Land Cover Conversion Uncertainty on Global Carbon and Climate Estimates." More information can be found in the publications section.

Donal O'Leary receives AGU Outstanding Student Paper Award in the Cryosphere category for his paper titled "Investigating the early snowmelt of 2015 in the Cascade Mountains using new MODIS-based snowmelt timing maps." Congratulations Donal!

Fall 2017

Yannick Le Page led a team of researchers, including George Hurtt, in his paper titled "Synergy between land use and climate change increases future fire risk in Amazon forests." More information can be found in the publications section.

John Armston, Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, Suzanne Marselis, Donal O'Leary, and Hao Tang all presented at the AGU 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans, LA. More information can be found here.

Louise Chini, George Hurtt, and Ritvik Sahajpal co-author assessment on the impacts of global warming, titled "Assessing the impacts of 1.5 °C global warming – simulation protocol of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP2b)." More information can be found in the publications section.

Wenli Huang led a team of researchers, including Ralph Dubayah, Laura Duncanson, Katelyn Dolan, and George Hurtt in her paper titled "County-scale biomass map comparison: a case study for Sonoma, California." More information can be found in the publications section.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt co-author the "Global Carbon Budget 2017." Drs. Chini and Hurtt provided global land-use data for this study. More information can be found in the publications section.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt co-author a paper describing the motivation and the experimental design for a new set of modeling studies of global climate change over the past 1000 years, titled "The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 3: The last millennium, scientific objective, and experimental design for the PMIP4 past1000 simulations." More information can be found in the publications section.

Donal O'Leary visits the USA National Phenology Network headquarters in Tucson, AZ as part of a joint USGS and University of Arizona project in November.

George Hurtt co-authors review paper "Vegetation demographics in Earth System Models: A review of progress and priorities". More information can be found in the publications section.

Katelyn Dolan led a team of researchers, including George Hurtt, Steve Flanagan, Justin Fisk, Ritvik Sahajpal, Yannik Le Page, and Ralph Dubayah, in her research "Disturbance Distance: quantifying forests' vulnerability to disturbance under current and future conditions." More information can be found here as well as in the publications section.

Donal O'Leary authors paper titled "Snowmelt timing, phenology, and growing season length in conifer forests of Crater Lake National Park, USA." More information can be found in the publications section.

Rachel Lamb has received support from the National Socio-Enviornmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) for her Graduate Student Pursuit research proposal, Moving beyond random acts of restoration to robust adaptive resilience: A case comparison between the US and Canadian coasts of Lake Erie. Rachel will serve as co-team leader of this interdisciplinary research project.

Suzanne Marselis and Danielle Rappaport were invited to participate in the "Remote Sensing of Tropical Biodiversity" workshop administered by CEBA in French Guinea.

Summer 2017

George Hurtt has been selected to serve as the Chair the University Research Council for three year terms. More information can be found in here.

Suzanne Marselis has been awarded the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) 2017-2018. NASA awards a number of NESSFs each year in order to support Masters or Doctoral degree students, pursuing research in earth or space sciences that supports NASA's scientific goals. More information can be found here.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt were co-authors of a letter titled “Biospheric feedback effects in a synchronously coupled model of human and Earth systems” in Nature Climate Change. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Donal O'Leary's published his dataset "Snowmelt Timing Maps Derived from MODIS for North America, 2001-2015." More information and access to the data can be found here.

Donal O'Leary was selected to participate in the 4th annual National Center for Atmospheric Research Graduate Workshop on Environmental Data Analytics from June 12-16, 2017.

George Hurtt and Ritvik Sahajpal attended the ACME All Hands Meeting, in Potomac MD on June 5-7, 2017.

Spring 2017

Incoming graduate students Caroline Bruchman and David Miles were awarded the Brian Melchior Endowed Research Fund Award for research and travel costs. The award is gifted through the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences to exceptional students working towards their master's degree in the Geographical Sciences.

George Hurtt appointed Guest Editor for a new Focus Collection on carbon monitoring in the international journal Environmental Research Letters. More information can be found in here.

George Hurtt has been accepted into the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science Boot Camp from June 19-23, 2017 at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York. More information can be found in here.

The Joint Global Carbon Cycle Center is organizing the research coordination meeting, focusing on the NASA Carbon Monitoring System ROSES 2016 solicitation: “CARBON MONITORING SYSTEM” on Wednesday January 31 @ 11AM-12PM.

Rachel Lamb has been selected to participate in the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center's (SESYNC) 2017 Graduate Student Workshop on Socio-Environmental Synthesis in Annapolis, MD.

Rachel Lamb and Donal O'Leary have successfully defended their Portfolios in front of their PACs. Congratulations!

Fall 2016

Steve Flanagan received his PhD and hooded by his advisor George Hurtt on December 21, 2016 at the University of Maryland. Congratulations!

John Armston, Louise Chini, Ralph Dubayah, Laura Duncanson, Steve Flanagan, Steve Hancock, Wenli Huang, George Hurtt, Wenlu Qi and Hao Tang were selected to present in the AGU Fall 2016 at San Francisco, CA. More information can be found in here.

Donal O'Leary has been invited to present his research “Investigating the early snowmelt of 2015 in the Cascade Mountains using new snowmelt timing maps” at the 2017 George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites.

Rachel Lamb has been invited to present her poster “Framework for Identifying Social-Ecological Hotspots” at the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. The meeting’s theme is Serving Society Through Science Policy.

Louise Chini presented at the 3rd Global Land Project Open Science Meeting at Beijing, China on Oct 24-27. Her talk was entitled "Imts of shifting cultivation on global land-use forcing for Earth system models”. For more information see here.

Ritvik Sahajpal was invited to be a member of International Editorial Advisory Board for upcoming International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science under the stewardship of the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), India.

George Hurtt was a co-author of an article “The Scenario Model Intercomparison Porject (SCenarioMIP) for CMIP6” in Geosci. Model . More info can be found in "Publications" section.

An international team of researchers co-lead by Drs. David Lawrence (NCAR) and George Hurtt have recently published the plan for the global Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) in the journal Geoscientific Model Development. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

George Hurtt, Katelyn Dolan and Wenli Huang participated at the NASA's Carbon Monitoring System & USDA Forest Service 2016 Applications Workshop & Tutoiral: "LiDAR and CMS Applications, User & Lessons Learned in the Tri-State Area of Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania" on Sept 9, 2016.

Team of Randy Kawa (PI, NASA GSFC), George Hurtt (Co-I, UMD GEOG), Paul Newman (Co-I, NASA GSFC), Tom Hanisco (Co-I, NASA GSFC), Glenn Wolfe (Co-I, NASA GSFC/JCET), Glenn Diskin (Co-I, NASA LaRC) and George Collatz (Collaborator, NASA GSFC) has been awarded the NASA CMS, titled "Airborne Eddy Flux Measurements for Validation/Evaluation of High-Resolution MRV Systems". For more information see here.

Team of César Izaurralde (PI), Varaprasad Bandaru, George Hurtt, Chris Justice, Fernando Sedano, Ritvik Sahajpal, Curtis Jones and Ashwan Reddy has been awarded the NASA CMS grant, titled "Cropland Carbon Monitoring System (CCMS): A satellite-based system to estimate carbon fluxes on U.S croplands”. For more information see here.

George Hurtt was appointed to UMD Research council. Congrats!!

Rachel Lamb, Donal O'Leary, and Lei Ma accepted to join George Hurtt's lab from Fall 2016! Welcome!!

Summer 2016

According to Google Scholar, George Hurtt's work has been now cited over 10,000 times. Congrats!

George Hurtt & other GEOG faculties were featured in BSOS Be the Solution Magazine. For more information here.

Spring 2016

Steve Flanagan successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled "Plant Migrations Impact on Potential Vegetation and Carbon Redistribution in Northern North America from Climate Change" on May 17, 2016.

The Global Ecology Lab team was awarded computational time on the Bluecrab High Performance Computing cluster to advance high-resolution carbon modeling at regional-global scales by running the Ecosystem Demography (ED) model at policy relevant scales. For more information see here.

Suzanne Marselis published an article entitled "Deriving comprehensive forest structure information from mobile laser scanning observations using automated point cloud classification." in the Environmental Modelling & Software. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

John Armston has join Ralph Dubayah's lab as a part of GEDI team. Welcome!!

George Hurtt was an invited participant to Climate Action 2016 Summit. More info can be found here.

On May 4th, UMD is hosting a public event "Climate Action 2016 Forum" in light of Climate Action 2016. George Hurtt was one of panelists for the Carbon Monitoring and Modeling in the Land Use Sector session. More info can be found here.

George Hurtt(Lead) and Ralph Dubayah published a research article "The Impact of Fine-Scale Disturbances on the Predictability of Vegetation Dynamics and Carbon Flux" in PLOS one. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

The Joint Global Carbon Cycle Center is organizing the research coordination meeting, focusing on the NASA Carbon Monitoring System ROSES 2016 solicitation: “CARBON CYCLE SCIENCE” on Tuesday May 3 @ 10-11AM.

George Hurtt presented at on Sustained Observations for Carbon Cycle Science and Decision Support in Boulder, CO on April 13-14. His talk was entitled ‘Lessons from the NASA Carbon Monitoring System”.

Donal O'Leary was awarded a 2016 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. More info can be found here.

Rachel Lamb has been awarded with a 2016-2017 Flagship Fellowship. More info can be found here.

Suzanne Marselis, Laura Duncanson and others traveled to Gabon for the AfriSAR campaign. They carried out several field visits to collect calibration/validation information for GEDI's biomass models. More information can be found here.

Winter 2016

Steve Flanagan(Lead), Katelyn Dolan, George Hurtt, Ritvik Sahajpal, Maosheng Zhao published an article "Potential Vegetation and Carbon Redistribution in Northern North America from Climate Change" in Climate. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Fall 2015

Louise Chini, Ralph Dubayah, Laura Duncanson, Steve Flanagan, Qiongyu Huang, Wenli Huang, George Hurtt, Wenlu Qi, Hao Tang and Maosheng Zhao were selected to present in the AGU Fall 2015 at San Francisco, CA. More information can be found in here.

George Hurtt is to co-chair the Carbon Monitoring System and Applications Sessions (oral and poster) at the AGU Fall 2015 at San Francisco, CA on Monday Dec 14, 2015. More information can be found in here: poster and oral

Maosheng Zhao was a co-author of a research article “Spatiotemporal patterns of terrestrial gross primary production” in Reviews in Geophysics. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

On November 19th, NASA Goddard youtube released viedo called "Carbon All Around US." In the video, George Hurtt briefly explains how scientists are still trying to answer important questions about how carbon dioxide emissions get absorbed by the land and the ocean — and how this could change in the future. Watch here.

Katelyn Dolan, George Hurtt and Christine Kang traveled to participate in the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Science Team Meeting, in Pasadena, CA on November 16-18.

George Hurtt was one of five panelists for NASA media coverage to discuss the effects of increasing carbon emissions on the Earth's atmosphere and the impact on climate-change. streamed live on Nov. 12. More info can be found in here and to watch.

George Hurtt and Ritvik Sahajpal traveled to participate at the ACME All Hands Meeting, in Albuquerque, NM on November 2-4, 2015.

Wenli Huang was a lead author of a research article ”Local discrepancies in continental scale biomass maps: a case study over forested and non-forested landscapes in Maryland, USA" in Carbon Balance and Management. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Wenli Huang was a lead author of a research article “Sensitivity of Multi-Source SAR Backscatter to Changes in Forest Aboveground Biomass” in Remote Sensing . More info can be found in "Publications" section.

George Hurtt presented at the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling 19th Session in Dubrovnik, Croatia Oct. 19. His talk was entitled ‘Global Gridded Land-use Forcing Datasets for CMIP6”.

Katelyn Dolan successfully defended her PhD thesis, titled "Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Disturbance Within and Between Forested Regions of the US" on OCT 16, 2015.

Maosheng Zhao was a co-author of a research article “Local cooling and warming effects of forests based on satellite observations” in Nature Communications. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Maosheng Zhao was a co-author of a research article “Comparing MODIS Satellite with terrestrial Inventory Data to estimate the NPP of Austrian Forests” in Remote Sensing. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Ralph Dubayah and George Hurtt were selected and honored at the 17th Annual Research Leaders Luncheon, hosted by the UMD Division of Research, on October 8, 2015.

The World Climate Research Program’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) formally endorsed the new Land-Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP). LUMIP is co-Chaired by George Hurtt (UMD) and Dave Lawrence (NCAR), and has an international Science Steering Group. More information can be found in here.

Summer 2015

The team of 8 undergraduates, led by Katelyn Dolan and Rachel Moore Marks, spent over 2 weeks measuring trees in the diverse landscapes of northern Pennsylvania, as a part of tri state forest Carbon Monitoring System project. More about this field campaign news can be found in here.

Sam Jantz(Lead), Louise Chini, Qiongyu Huang, Rachel M. Moore and George hurtt were co-authors of a Contributed paper "Future habitat loss and extinctions driven by land-use change in biodiversity hotspots under four scenarios of climate-change mitigation" in Conservation Biology. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Spring 2015

George Hurtt is invited to participate in the IPCC Expert Meeting on Scenarios from May 18-20, 2015, at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.

Justin Fisk received his PhD and hooded by his advisor George Hurtt on May 15, 2015 at the University of New Hampshire. Congratulation!

Ralph Dubayah and George Hurtt were selected and honored at the 8th Annual University-Wide Celebration of Scholarship and Research on May 1, 2015.

Katelyn Dolan, Steve Flanagan, Justin Fisk, George Hurtt and Maosheng Zhao are selected to present the posters in the NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop on April 20-24, 2015 at College Park Marriott Hotel and Conference Center Maryland.

George Hurtt presented “Geographical Sciences Highlights” at the University System of Maryland Second Annual Environmental Summit, April 17, 2005, at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. More information can be found in here.

George Hurtt (PI), Louise Chini (Co-I) and Matthew Hansen (Co-I), were awarded the DOE SciDac grant, titled "Quantification of Land-use/Land Cover Change as Driver of Earth System Dynamics”.

George Hurtt participated in the pre-decadal survey workshop on Carbon-Climate on March 15-18, 2015 at University of Oklahoma.

George Hurtt gives a keynote entitled, "Frontiers in Terrestrial Ecosystem Science" at the Hirshhorn Museum's Ring Auditorium, hosted by the Center for Tropical Forest Science - Forest Global Earth Obervatories.

Maosheng Zhao was co-author of a review article "Global satellite monitoring of climate-induced vegetation disturbances" in Trends in Plant Science. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Maosheng Zhao was co-author of a review article "Dynamics of MODIS evapotranspiration in South Africa" in Water SA. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Fernando Sedano (lead) and George Hurtt (co-author) published an article entitled "A Kalman Filter-Based Method to Generate Continuous Time Series of Medium-Resolution NDVI Images." in the Remote Sensing. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Fall 2014

Ralph Dubayah, Laura Duncanson, Justin Fisk, Steve Flanagan, and George Hurtt were selected to present in the AGU Fall 2014 at San Francisco. More information can be found in here.

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George Hurtt selected and funded to participate in the DOE "Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME)” project.

George Hurtt lead the report entitled “NASA CARBON MONITORING SYSTEM: Prototype Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification Progress Report and Future Plans”. More info can be found in here.

Katelyn Dolan gave a presentation titled "Spatial and temporal patterns of forest disturbance within and between geographically distint regions of the US: rates, intensity and size distribution" at the Happy Hour Research Seminars (Hartwick Building, Suite 410) on Oct 29, 2014.

George Hurtt particpated and presented "Societal Benefit Context for TECLUB Science Questions Amendable to Satellite Remote sensing”. at the Terrestrial Ecology, Carbon Cycle, Land Use and Biodiversity (TECLUB) on Oct 28, 2014 at Goddard Space Flight Center.

George Hurtt went to UCLA to give a talk titled "Frontiers in Integrated Terrestrial Carbon, Land-use, and Climate Science" on Oct 27, 2014.

Summer 2014

George Hurtt was selected to lead the Carbon Monitoring Science Team and "High Resolution Carbon Monitoring and Modeling project" for next phase of NASA's Carbon Monitoring System. More news can be found in here.

Ralph Dubayah's "GEDI Lidar" was selected for Earth Ventures Instrument program. More news can be found in here.

Ritvik Sahajpal and George Hurtt were co-authors of an article entitled "Identifying representative crop rotation patterns and grassland loss in the U.S. western corn- belt." in the Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

George Hurtt was co-chair of the workshop entitled, "Experimental Design for CMIP6: Aerosols, Land Use, and Future Scenarios" held at the Aspen Global Change Institute in Aspen, CO August 4-8, 2014. His presentations included "Proposal for a Land-Use Model Inter-comparison Project (LUMIP) for CMIP6- Summary", and "Proposed Land-Use Harmonization Priorities and Strategy for CMIP6 (LUMIP)- Summary".

George Hurtt attended the CCI/IA EMF Workshop "Climate Change Impact and Integrated Assessment" in Snowmass, CO July 28-August 1 2014, and presented a talk entitled "Proposal for a Land-Use Model Inter-comparison Project (LUMIP) for CMIP6- Summary".

George Hurtt and David Lawrence co-chaired a series of meetings in The Hague, Netherlands and Hamburg, Germany on designing the Land-use Model Intercomparison Project in preparation for the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6).

George Hurtt presented an invited talk entitled "Land-use Harmonization for CMIP5 and Priorities for CMIP6" at the Pan-GWEX meeting, The Hague, Netherlands on July 17-18.

George Hurtt participated in the U.S. Land use/ land cover scenarios and projections workshop in Rockville MD on June 25-27, 2014.

George Hurtt was a co-author of an article entitled "Data-driven diagnostics of terrestrial carbon dynamics over North America" in the SicenceDirect. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Ralph Dubayah and George Hurtt were co-authors of an article entitled "Human Land-Use Practices Lead to Global Long-Term Increases in Photosynthetic Capacity" in the Remote Sensing. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

George Hurtt was a co-author of an article entitled "Remote Sensing Assessment of Forest Disturbance across Complex Mountainous Terrain: The Pattern and Severity of Impacts of Tropical Cyclone Yasi on Australian Rainforests" in the Remote Sensing. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

George Hurtt, Yannick Le Page, Louise Chini participated in the Pursuit: Sustainable Global Climate Mitigation Scenarios workshop at SESYNC on June 12-13, 2014. George Hurtt is the co-lead of the Pursuit project with Jae Edmonds.

Ritvik Sahajpal successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled "Assessing Cellulosic Biofuel Feedstock Production Across a Gradient of Agricultural Management Systems in the US Midwest" on May 30, 2014.

Louise Chini and George Hurtt were co-authors of an article entitled "From land use to land cover: restoring the afforestation signal in a coupled integrated assessment – earth system model and the implications for CMIP5 RCP simulations" in the Biogeoscience. More info can be found in "Publications" section.

Spring 2014

Justin Fisk was selected to receive the Department of Geographical Sciences Outstanding Faculty Research Assistant Award on May 23, 2014.

George Hurtt (WG 2 chapter 4 and WG1 chapter 6) and Louise Chini (WG 2 Chapter 4) were involved as the contributing authors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5). All reports can be found on the in IPCC website.

George Hurtt was invited and presented at the obs4MIPS meeting at NASA HQ on April 29-May 1, 2014.

George Hurtt went to LUC4C meeting in Germany as SSG member on Feb 10-13, 2014.

Winter 2014

George Hurtt has been appointed “Guest Editor” of a new special issue of the international journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles titled “Global Land-use Change and Carbon/Climate Dynamics.” More information can be found in here.

Fall 2013

Louise Chini, Justin Fisk, Yannick Le Page, Katelyn Dolan, Laura Duncanson, Steve Flanagan, Ritvik Sahajpal were selected to present in the AGU Fall 2013 at San Francisco. More information can be found in here.

Louise Chini contributed land-use data to the recent Global Carbon Budget (2013) and was a co-author on the related publication that was released on November 19, 2013. The Global Carbon Project provides an annual report of carbon dioxide emissions, land and ocean sinks and accumulation in the atmosphere, incorporating data from multiple research institutes from around the world. For more information and data. Visit.

Louise Chini was a co-author on Matt Hansen’s recent Science article “High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change” which gives the first Local-to-Global mapping of forest extent, loss, and gain. Read the full article.

George Hurtt participated in the National Academy Meeting at Washington DC on Nov 13 2013. He gave a presentation regarding CMIP6.

Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, Maosheng Zhao and Christine Kang traveled to participate in the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Science Team Meeting, in Pasadena, CA on November 5-7 2013.

Justin Fisk, George Hurtt and Katelyn Dolan, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Toronto and Tulane Univeristy, published on an article on the net impacts of tropical cyclones on the U.S. carbon balance. The article is published in an Environmental Research Letters special issue on Extreme Events and the Carbon Cycle.

Justin Fisk participated in the GTSP (Global Technology Strategy Program) Technical Workshop and GCAM Community Modeling Meeting hosted by the Joint Global Change Research Institute on October 1-4 2013. He gave a presentation entitled "One carbon cycle: Impacts of model integration, ecosystem process detail, model resolution, and initialization data, on projections of future climate mitigation strategies" in the session: "Integrated Assessment and Earth System Models"

George Hurtt remotely participated in the WGCM 17 session including Joint WGCM-AIMES session, "Interactions among Managed Ecosystems at the JGCRI on OCT 1 - 3 2013. He led the discussion on the "What have we learned from CMIP5? Questions for CMIP6? - LUMIP."

George Hurtt traveled to participate in the Joint GLP/iLEAPS/AIMES workshop, "Interactions among Managed Ecosystems, Climate, and Societies (IMECS)"in Amsterdam, Netherlands on September 25 - 26 2013. He led the discussion on the "Land-use data and projections at the global scale for studying climate interactions."

Summer 2013

George Hurtt traveled to participate in the workshop "Next generation climate change experiments needed to advance knowledge and for assessment of CMIP6" at the AGCI in Aspen, CO on Aug 5-9, 2013. He was chair of the "Land-use Panel" and on the panel "Formulating CMIP6".

George Hurtt traveled to participate in the EMF Summer Workshop, "Climate Change Impact and Integrated Assessments"in Snowmass, CO on July 31 - Aug 2 2013. He led the discussion on the "Land-Use Harmonization."

Ralph Dubayah (PI), George Hurtt (Co-I) and Anu Swatantran (Co-I), were awarded the NASA Carbon Monitoring System 2013 grant, titled "Development of a Prototype MRV system to Support Carbon Ecomarket Infrastructure in Sonoma County". They will continue to develop a prototype MRV system based on Commercial off-the-shelf(COTS) remote sensing and analysis capabilities to support ecomarket infrastructure in Sonoma County, CA.

Spring 2013

Louise Chini was recently invited to participate as a panelist at the Energy-Water-Land Nexus workshop in Washington DC on May 6-7, 2013. The workshop was organized jointly by MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies and sponsored by BP, with attendees from academia, industry and the policy and NGO spheres. The goals of the event were to review the state-of-knowledge for several topics related to the energy-water-land-food nexus, and to help define a high priority research agenda for these increasingly important subject areas. Louise spoke about her work integrating land-use into earth system modeling and participated in the panel discussion.

Katelyn Dolan, Justin Fisk, Louise Chini, and George Hurtt traveled to participate in the NASA TE Science Team Meeting in La Jolla, CA on April 30 - May 2, 2013. Louise gave a talk on her new grant titled "Using NASA Remote Sensing Data to Reduce Uncertainty of Land-use Transitions in Global Carbon-Climate Models". George gave a synthesis talk titled "Ecosystems in 2100: changing climate, shifting biomes, altered disturbances, land-use, and implications for carbon-climate-human feedbacks " and co-chaired two breakouts "TE Modeling and data WGs joint Session; Model working group Past-future" "Exploring NASA CMS and TE Synergies; NASA CMS Overview". In addition the lab presented three posters titled "High-Resolution Ecosystem Modeling as part of Robust Carbon Monitoring System", "Modeling the Impacts of Major Forest Disturbances on the Earth's Coupled Carbon-Climate System, and the Capacity of Forests to Meet Future Demands for Wood, Fuel, and Fiber" and "Using NASA Remote Sensing and Models to Advance Integrated Assessments of Coupled Human-Forest Dynamics for North America".

Louise Chini was awarded the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program grant. She will lead a team to develop an entirely new generation of LUH data that is constrained with maps of global forest extent and change generated with NASA remote sensing data. This will enable climate simulations to be based on, and consistent with, observations of actual forest cover change, and will also provide estimates of uncertainties associated with the LUH datasets.

On Thursday, March 7, 2013 the University of Maryland (UMD) and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA-GSFC) announced the establishment of the Joint Global Carbon Cycle Center (Project Scientist: Fernando Sedano). This event celebrated the establishment of the Joint Global Carbon Cycle Center and the 30-year long partnership between UMD and NASA-GSFC. Leadership from both UMD (Wallace Loh, John Townshend, and George Hurtt) and NASA-GSFC (Christopher Scolese, and Piers Sellers) came together to recall previous accomplishments and highlight a promising future together.

The article, written by Yannick Le Page, George Hurtt and UMD researchers at the PNNL, on climate mitigation was published. More information can be found on Publications tab.

Katelyn Dolan, Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, Yannick le Page, Ritvik Sahajpal, Maosheng Zhao are traveling to Albuquerque, NM for the 4th NACP meeting, Feb 4-7, 2013.

BSOS recognized the achievement of published articles on their website. They recognized George Hurtt’s newest Science magazine article, as well as César Izaurralde and Ritvik Sahajpal’s article in Nature.

Our lab is certified the bronze level of UMD Green Office (GO) Program. Thank you for your participation and learn how to go GREEN.

Fall2012

Recent article on the CMS Team (Ralph Dubayah, George Hurtt, Chengquan Huang, Anu Swatantran, Maosheng Zhao and Naiara Pinto) was published in Baltimore Sun.

Matthew Brolly, Louise Chini, Justin Fisk, Yannick Le Page, Katelyn Dolan, Laura Duncanson, Steve Flanagan, Ritvik Sahajpal were invited and gave presentations in the AGU Fall 2012 at San Francisco. More information can be found in AGU website.

Ritvik Sahajpal participated in the AgMIP North America Workshop September 4th - 7th in Ames, Iowa. The workshop focused on examining the carbon dioxide, temperature and water interactions using available site data and their effect on the performance and improvement of the EPIC crop model.

Laura Duncanson will present a talk entitled 'Modeling tree size distribution as a function of stand age: an application of novel remote sensing datasets' at ForestSat, in Corvallis, Oregon.

Laura Duncanson will present a poster entitled 'A novel canopy delineation algorithm for discrimination of understory and overlapping crowns with high‐resolution LiDAR' at Silvilaser, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Matthew Brolly was invited to, and visited the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhoffen, Germany on September 3rd to the 8th 2012 as a visiting scientist. This was the first in a series of exchange visits planned as part of a new knowledge exchange partnership with the Microwaves and Radar Institute at DLR on the subject of forest radar interferometry.

Summer 2012

George Hurtt, and collaborators Jeff Chamber (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) and Robinson Negron-Juarez (Tulane University) travled to Misson Beach, Australia to collect field data on forest disturbance from tropical cyclone Yasi, which made landfall there as a Category 5 storm on February 3, 2011.

Welcome Maosheng Zhao to our lab from the University of Montana!!! He is working on ED modeling in context of NASA-CMS and NASA-TE projects.

Matthew Brolly published a correspondence article in Nature: Climate Change. Ref: Woodhouse IH, Mitchard ET, Brolly M, Maniatis D & Ryan CM. (2012). "Radar Backscatter is Not a 'Direct Measure' of Forest Biomass." Nature Climate Change. 2(556-557). doi:10.1038/nclimate1601.

Ralph Dubayah's proposal "Carbon Monitoring and Modeling: A CMS Phase 2 Study" was selected for funding by NASA as part of its Carbon Monitoring System program. This competitive program is to develop protocols for fusing remotely sensed observations with field data, provide accurate validation test areas for the continental-scale biomass product and demonstrate efficacy for prognostic ecosystem modeling. Other lab members involved as Co-Investigates included: George Hurtt, Anu Swatantra and Naiara Pinto.

George Hurtt was selected as Science Team Leader for the NASA Carbon Monitoring System.

Laura Duncanson attended a short course at NASA Ames from July 16-26. The course is sponsored by the NASA Earth Exchange program, and is focused on super computing for climate and ecosystem modeling. During the program, she will be working on the generation of a Quickbird time series analysis for individual tree based mortality.

Spring 2012

Ritvik Sahajpal successfully defended his PhD proposal titled 'Assessing Biofuel Feedstock Production and Ecosystem Service Tradeoffs Across a Gradient of Agricultural Management Systems in the US Midwest.'
Matthew Brolly went to DESDynI Science meeting in NASA headquarters, Washington D.C., on March 19, 2012

Louise Chini, Justin Fisk and George Hurtt were honored at the 5th Annual University-Wide Celebration of Scholarship and Research for their paper "Harmonization of Land-Use Scenarios for the Period 1500-2100: 600 Years of Global Gridded Annual Land-Use Transitions, Wood Harvest, and Resulting Secondary Lands."

Naiara Pinto taught the radar and lidar processing to WWF researchers during REDD+ workshop in Puerto Maldonado, Peru. The meeting with WWF team members from South America, DRC, Indonesia, and Madagascar discussed approaches to Measure, Report, and Verify (MRV) carbon stocks in tropical forests.