Research

My research focuses on understanding how plants respond to changes in climate and how resource limitations affect the function, structure, and dynamics of vegetation. Understanding these processes is important because water and nutrients are key drivers of regional and global carbon and water cycles. My goal is to develop sound process-based predictive frameworks for carbon and water cycles that are reliable, robust and as much as possible capture 'reality'. I use mathematical models namely; community land model, ecosystem demography model, and nitrogen allocation model, and implement plant physiological processes by integrating these models with different types of empirical data. I use models to investigate how plants respond to current and future climatic conditions, examine and generate hypotheses, and explore temporal and spatial patterns that emerge from the model outcomes.

Another area that interests me is deforestation, where forests are converted to croplands for economic purposes. I am interested in understanding the effects of these transformations on the land surface from the carbon, water, and energy flux point of view.

Specific topics that I work on:

· Plant ecophysiology and atmosphere-biosphere interactions

· Ecosystem function, structure, and composition

· Land surface modeling and data assimilation

· Mathematical models in plant ecology