The northern boreal arctic ecosystem has experienced greater warming than other global areas in recent decades, and how this warming climate affects the regional carbon cycle is uncertain. A lengthening potential growing-season due to warming has been linked to vegetation greening and enhanced productivity in the northern latitudes, while increasing vegetation water stress and enhanced autumn respiration may be offsetting the benefits of a longer growing-season and decreasing regional carbon sequestration. Moreover, more frequent wildfires under a warming climate may fundamentally alter vegetation composition and function, and exert strong control on the regional carbon budget. Satellite remote sensing helps reduce the gap between “top-down” atmospheric inversions and “bottom-up” field measurements and may provide an effective means to address the above questions. In this study, we developed a satellite-based terrestrial ecosystem model to quantify the spatial patterns and variability in ecosystem productivity and net ecosystem exchange in the northern latitudes and evaluate their sensitivity to climate variability, drought and fire disturbances during the MODIS era. This work is part of the efforts towards developing an operational level 4 carbon product for the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission.

 

Short Biography:

Dr. Yonghong Yi has been a research scientist at Numerical Terradynamic Simulation group (NTSG, http://ntsg.umt.edu), University of Montana since 2009. Her research is focused on understanding the impact of climate change on regional and global carbon cycle using satellite remote sensing, with a particular interest in the high latitudes. She received a Bsc (hydrology, 2002) from Wuhan University, China, and Msc (Remote sensing, 2005) from Peking University, China, and PhD (hydrology, 2008) from Tsinghua University, China.