Seibt Lab at UCLA: Land Ecosystems Interacting with the Atmosphere (LEIA)

Welcome to LEIA, the Seibt lab at UCLA!

Our research aims to better understand how land ecosystems function, how they interact with the atmosphere, and how they respond to ongoing climate change. We are particularly interested in tropical, mediterranean, boreal, and arctic systems as they are highly vulnerable to extreme events such as heat waves, and gradual environmental shifts due to climate change.

We develop and use process-based models of how we think leaves/soils/ecosystems operate, but the real test of our understanding is in confronting these models with observations. Work in my lab therefore combines modeling with field measurements -- and we often find that things don't quite work as expected. This then allows us to adjust parameters or refine our models, to make them more accurate and improve our predictions of the future of land ecosystems under climate change.

Our field measurements focus on two recently developed observational tools: carbonyl sulfide (COS) and solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF). Our COS and SIF instruments are currently operating at a field station in the tropical rainforest at La Selva, Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the flux tower at La Selva was destroyed during a storm in June 2023. This kind of damage is quite typical for a tropical field site, and is the price we have to pay if we want to monitor tropical ecosystems on the ground. For now, we continue to collect data from a second, shorter canopy access tower. The pictures show the flux tower when it was still intact, and the beautiful view across the tree tops from the top of the tower.