Planet Lab

Blue Marble  (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli)

      My name is Yulong Zhang. I am currently a Research Scientist at Nicholas School of the Environment in Duke University. Before joining in Duke, I conducted my post-doctoral research in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and held a Senior Research Fellowship in USDA Forest Service. My ultimate mission is to understand how the terrestrial biosphere works as a key piece of the breathing Earth System. Remote sensing, ecological modeling, and ground observing are my primary tools to achieve this goal. Specifically, my research foci are to:

• understand Earth’s greening and its pattern, mechanism, sustainability, and uncertainties at different scales

• model atmospheric exchanges of carbon and water with terrestrial biosphere and explore how they are shaped by climate change and human-induced land use/cover change based on multi-source remote sensing and ground measurements 

• explore the potential linkages of terrestrial vegetation variability with large-scale atmospheric teleconnections such as ENSO and Arctic Oscillation

• develop high-resolution land surface products based on optical, thermal & microwave remote sensing

• improve the representative of fire modeling and post-fire vegetation dynamics in Earth system models

      The Earth, composed of land, ocean & atmosphere, runs as a huge dynamic system in its own amazing way. Our understandings on mechanisms behind this habitable planet is not only linked with human benefits in this home cradle, but also provides the theoretical basis for human to potentially terraform other planets (e.g. creating ecosystems on Mars) in the future. 

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