Rui Cheng
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, MIT
Monday, Mar. 13 | 9:35 a.m. | AERO 114
Abstract: Land ecosystems are a major sink of atmospheric CO2, which plays a key role in mitigating global climate change. As land ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes due to global warming, the future direction and magnitude of land-atmosphere CO2 exchange have become highly uncertain. However, monitoring land-atmosphere CO2 exchange globally is limited by unevenly distributed ground measurements. Here, I present the potential of advanced remote sensing tools, e.g., Solar induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF), to mechanistically track land CO2 uptake by integrating observations and simulations from leaf, canopy, and satellite levels. Collectively, my work helps to better constrain the uncertainties of land-atmosphere CO2 exchange and understand vegetation-climate feedbacks, particularly in regions with limited ground measurements, e.g., the Arctic, tropics, and mountains.
Bio: Dr. Rui Cheng is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned a B.S. in Atmospheric Science from Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China) in 2015, and an M.S. in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Lehigh University in 2017. She recently received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Benefiting from her interdisciplinary background, her research focuses on understanding ecosystem-climate feedbacks using multi-scale approaches, particularly in vulnerable but understudied regions.