Welcome to the Biometeorology Laboratory!

Old-growth forest

Tallgrass prairie

Deciduous forest

Savanna

Alpine forest

In this lab we use stable isotope ratio and meteorological techniques to measure, and models to integrate information regarding variations of water and carbon transfer between the the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems.

Ecosystem research that surveys the cycling of carbon, water and nutrients is critical to the maintenance of natural resources on earth. Measuring fluxes is one of the direct means to quantify transfers of these elements between pools. Alteration of ecosystem processes or its composition often results in a net change of gross flux balance. Hence, anomalies in flux variation can serve as an indicator of ecosystem response to environmental changes.

When elements transfer from one pool to another, changes of their stable isotope ratios often occur because biological and physical processes influence the behavior of molecules that have slightly different masses. Consequently, measurements of stable isotope ratios in organic matter, water and atmospheric gases are very useful and have been adopted to investigate ecological questions from a wide range of temporal and spatial scales.

Our research group uses stable isotope ratio measurements to quantify contributions of components to net ecosystem fluxes. We also use stable isotope ratios as tracers to identify variations of biological sources and sinks and to understand mechanisms that control the variation.