Our lab is interested in plant ecology in a changing world: both the environment and the technologies to understand plants are changing. We work across different spatial scales from the global satellite observations to individual monitoring to intensive field campaigns from the Arctic to the Tropics.

1. Novel remote sensing tools to understand the carbon and water cycles. Particularly, we are interested in the applications of solar-induced chlorophylll fluorescence (SIF). We develop tools to measure SIF from the leaf to the ecosystem scale.

We have research sites in temperate mixed forests, semi-arid ecosystem, salt marsh, boreal forest, and tundra arctic. We aim to understand the use of SIF from both an ecophysiological perspective and a remote sensing (radiative transfer) perspective.

2. Forest structure - function relationship. We combine remote sensing of canopy physiology (SIF, hyperspectral, and thermal) and canopy structure (Terrestrial and airborne LiDAR) to understand the joint controls and coordination of forest structure and function.

We are interested in how leaf angle changes vertically, seasonally, and across species.

3. Impact of sea-level rise and salt-water intrusion on coastal ecosystems. With the support from the UVA Environmental Resilience Institute, we are developing remote sensing tools to understand the impact of sea-level rise on coastal vegetations. We are also interested in general the carbon cycles of coastal vegetation, particularly salt marshes. We use advanced remote sensing to monitor ghost forests everywhere.

4. AI and Very-high-resolution remote sensing. We use advanced deep larning algorithms and VHR remote sensing to address critical issues that were not possible before. We mapped millions of individual dead trees in the coast, and we will continue the work in other regions.