Carbon, Vegetation Dynamics and Landscape-Scale Processes

The department carries out a broad array of research focused on monitoring vegetation dynamics, with a particular focus on mapping and studying human and natural disturbances and their landscape-scale impacts, as well as changes to the earth surface as a result of climate variability. This research involves integration of field-based research with remotely-sensed observations to address key scientific uncertainties. Alterations to the global carbon cycle are changing atmospheric composition and climate with implications for human well-being and a particular focus of our research is on monitoring and modeling the terrestrial carbon cycle with unprecedented sophistication and resolution.

Projects

Project	Sponsor	Principal Investigator
Campus Forest Carbon Project	UMD Sustainability Fund	Lamb, Rachel
Land degradation - Local NPP Scaling Maps		Prince, Stephen D.
Land Degradation - Background	NASA	Prince, Stephen D.
Agricultural Land Use Change in Central and Northeast Thailand: Effects on Biomass Emissions, Soil Quality, and Rural Livelihoods	NASA	Bandaru, Varaprasad
An online application for decision support in siting woody-biomass to electricity facilities	California Energy Commission (CEC)	Bandaru, Varaprasad
System for Advanced Biofuels Production from Woody Biomass in the Pacific Northwest	University of California-Davis (Primary sponsor: USDA-NIFA)
Total Carbon Estimation in African Mangroves and Coastal Wetlands in Preparation for REDD and Blue Carbon Credits	NASA
Linking carbon and water dynamics in the pursuit of predicting peat collapse in coastal blue carbon wetlands	NASA
Cropland Carbon Monitoring System (CCMS): A satellite-based system to estimate carbon fluxes on U.S croplands	NASA
NASA South/Southeast Asia Research Initiative (SARI)	NASA	Vadrevu, Krishna