Research background
With increasing global population, human beings need more food, water, energy, and other resources for survival. The core of our research is to understand the impacts of climate and human activities on ecosystem production and resource use efficiency to help better meet human demands for Earth’s natural resources.
Research Areas
Research area 1: evaluating the impacts of climate change on ecosystem carbon and water
Increasing global temperatures will likely lead to more frequent climate extremes such as drought and flooding. Drought is one of the most costly natural disasters and imposes wide-ranging impacts on the economy, environment, and society. Thus, one focus of our research is on monitoring drought, and characterizing its impacts on the terrestrial carbon and water cycles, especially in relation to food security and water scarcity.
Research area 2: quantifying land use and land cover change and their impacts on ecosystem production and resource use efficiency
Another focus of our research is on characterizing land use and land cover change and their impacts on the terrestrial carbon and water cycles. We focus on paddy rice, forest, and green folder, and their biophysical and biochemical impacts on ecosystem dynamics.
Research area 3: investigating the interactions between climate change and human activities on agroecosystem production and resource use efficiency
The world has become more tightly connected/coupled because of the increasing interactions of local and distant places. How to achieve sustainable development in a highly coupled human and natural systems is an important question for current and future generations. Thus, a final focus of our research is on the investigation of the interactions between climate change and human activities to better understand their impacts on agroecosystem production and resource use efficiency, or more broadly on socioeconomic and environmental sustainability.
