Choy's Ecology and Remote Sensing Lab

Department of Geography, National Taiwan University

Climate change and cloudy mountains

We use synoptic sensing methods to integrate information acquired from ground, sky and space to investigate the impacts of climate change, mainly elevated temperatures and amplified seasonal droughts, on tropical and subtropical cloud/fog-affected montane forests and agroecosystems.

Students, postdocs and visiting scholars interested in the topics please contact me (email is at the bottom).

-- 2025 News --

• 09/18: New pub! Typhoon-driven spatiotemporal dynamics of landslides and the implications on carbon fluxes in a subtropical montane forest. Link

• 08/21: New pub! Delineating forest canopy phenology: Insights from long-term phenocam observations in North America. Link

• 06/28: New pub! Impact of diurnal temperature and humidity hysteresis on dryness in changing climates. Link

• 06/18: New pub! Spectroscopic assessment of flavor-related chemical compounds in fresh tea shoots using deep learning. Link

• 06/02: New pub! Comparison of climate-phenology-hydrology associations at two long-term studied forest watersheds in subtropical mountainous Taiwan. Link

• 02/13: The first TERN x LTSER conference was a great success! Photo

• 01/31: New pub! Towards a global understanding of tree mortality. Link

• 01/20: New pub! Global patterns in the allocation of forest net primary production. Link

• 01/12: New pub! Challenges and limitations of applying the flux variance similarity (FVS) method to partition evapotranspiration in a montane cloud forest. Link

• 01/10: New pub! Roles of forests in moderating the diurnal cycle of land-atmosphere interactions. Link

-- Notable events --

• 2025/02/13: First TERN x LTSER Conference, Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, Wufeng, Taichung City, Taiwan. Photo

• 2017/06/21-23: Crossing Scales and Disciplines to Identify Global Trends in Tree Mortality as an Indicator of Forest Health, Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems, Hannover, Germany.

• 2014/10/20-23: International and Interdisciplinary Workshop on Tree Mortality, the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany. Report Review

• 2013/09/04-06: A workshop on Remote Sensing of Vegetation Mortality: Challenges, Solutions, and Ecological Understanding. Santa Fe, NM, USA. Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Lab, NM, USA. Photo Publication

-- Highlights --

• Science Media Center Taiwan: 2024, 2023

• CommonWealth Magazine (2024): Climate change and mountain tea industry. Link1 Link2

• CTS (2024): Taiwan's montane cloud band. Link1 Link2

• Taiwan Plus (2023): Drought hits Taiwan's high mountain oolong tea. Link

• CBC (2023): La production de thé menacée par les changements climatiques à Taïwan. Link

• BBC Radio (2023): Climate change and Alishan. Link

• Getty Images (2023): Climate change and mountain tea plantation research. HTML

• Brinno Inc. (2023): When time lapse meets fog in the mountain. HTML

• TTV (2023): Climate change and mountain tea regions. Video 1 Video 2

• National Science and Technology Council (2023): Impacts of typhoons on litter production in montane cloud forests. HTML

• Daai TV (2023): The fog chaser Video

• United Daily News (2023): Impacts of climate change on mountain tea farms and montane cloud forests HTML & Video

• Taiwan Tea Monthly (2023): Cover image. PDF

• The Reporter (2022): Climate change and Alishan high mountain tea. HTML

• Global Association of MDP Programs (2021): MDP student research: Observational and numerical research of Taiwan's mountains. PDF

• Malvern Panalytical (2019): Assessing forest canopy productivity using active and passive remote sensing. HTML

• Cal Poly News (2017): Cal Poly assistant professor takes on vexing global problem of dying forests. HTML

• F1000 Research (2017): Estimation of canopy water interception of a near-tropical montane cloud forest in Taiwan. HTML

• Academia Sinica Highlights (2016): Rewrite a classical theory: When evolutionary biology encounters macroecology. PDF 

• NTU Highlights (2016): Daily variations have opposite effect to seasonal fluctuations on species distribution. HTML

• AAAS EurekAlert! (2016): Tolerance to daily versus seasonal temperature changes may dictate fitness. HTML

• Science Perspective (2016): Thermal trouble in the tropics. HTML

• Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (2016): Cover image. PDF 

• ScienceDaily (2015): Glimpses of the future: Drought damage leads to widespread forest death. HTML

• The New York Times (2015): Climate change threatens to kill off more aspen forests by 2050s. HTML

• Pacific Standard (2015): The trembling aspen Is in trouble. HTML

• The Week (2015): How climate change is killing the aspen forests of the American Southwest. HTML

• Colorado Public Radio (2015): Listen to aspen trees having 'heart attacks' due to drought. HTML

• Nature World News (2015): Drought damage will cause widespread forest death by 2050. HTML

• Woodworking Network (2015): Aspen trees threatened by hot droughts. HTML

• The Independent (2015): Climate change could eliminate aspen forests in the western US. HTML

• Carnegie Science highlight (2015): Glimpses of the future: Drought damage leads to widespread forest death. HTML

• Trends in Plant Science (2015): Cover image. PDF

• Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences (2014): Cover image. PDF

• IOP highlight (2014): Vegetation in Taiwan is strongly affected by El Nino. HTML

• Landsat news (2011): Consequences of aspen die-off. HTML

• DIREnet highlight (2011): Large drought-induced aboveground live biomass losses in southern Rocky Mountain aspen forests. PDF

• Photo gallery (2007): Postfire stand structure. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 88:23. PDF

-- Passengers and traces--

• 2023/05/25: Happy graduation to Chong JY! Photo

• 2022/10/12: We welcome Achmad Ghozali from Institut Teknologi Kalimantan (Indonesia) for an 8-week training

• 2019/12/30: We welcome Evan Liang, University of Western Australia Engineering major senior joining our lab this winter for 6 weeks.

• 2019/08/05: We welcome UCLA Civil Engineering major Ariel Kuo joining our lab this August.

• 2019/05/31: Time of year again for graduation. Super congrats to Lai GY, Tsai SF and Rau HT! Photo

• 2018/06/15: Happy graduation to Li XR! Photo

• 2017/07/11: Chung CH passed his dissertation with flying colors. Super congrats Dr. Chung!

• 2017/03/30: Our former undergraduate Liu PH has been admitted by the EBS University for Business and Law MBA program. Atta girl!

• 2017/07/03: We welcome Geography major Abbey Wong (KCL) and Venessa Ng (NUS)  joining our lab this summer. Photo

• 2016/07/26: We welcome Tai TC, UCL Geography major sophomore and Basant Apurva, Lakeside HS junior joining our lab this summer.

• 2016/07/04: We welcome Stella Yuan, UCSD Environmental Sciences/Psychology major senior joining our lab this summer for 6 weeks.

• 2015/07/21: Miao R, a 3rd year Nankai University Environmental Sciences major college student is staying with our lab for 8 weeks for the NTU summer intern training program.

• 2015/06/14: Our lab's first PhD Wang H. Super congrats, Dr. Wang!

• 2014/07/02: We welcome Xiong D, a 3rd year UCLA Civil Engineering major college student. She will stay in our lab for 8 weeks for the NTU summer intern training program.

• 2014/06/06: Our Hu KT and former summer intern Liu PH will graduate this year. You go girls! Photo