Our lab works at the intersection of plant ecophysiology and ecosystem ecology, scaling functional traits from the leaf to the globe.

We are interested in the mechanisms controlling the way photons bounce off or come from plants, and use this to inform our understanding of ecosystem health, productivity, and stress. 

How we do it

To better understand plant systems, it's crucial we make relevant measurements. We develop observation platforms and ground-based instrumentation in a way that leverages expertise in tinkering, physics, optics, statistical and computer science. From this, we can monitor and map vegetation structure and function at a high resolution at leaf and tower scales, and scale this to airborne and satellite scales. This includes optical sensors that measure vegetation reflectance, thermal emission and solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), as well as active sensors (lidar, radar, microwave).

What comes of it

Anything that enables us to quantify plant processes across space and time. Some examples include: monitoring ecosystem photosynthesis from tower-mounted scanning spectrometers; determining genotypic specific response to drought at a daily timescale using optical towers;  mapping bird habitat using lasers (lidar); tracking plant stress using custom built spectrometers; developing model-data fusion approaches to track the fate of carbon from assimilation to accumulation - see recent publications and projects for more!