We seek to improve our understanding of interactions between humans, ecosystems, and the climate system. An important research goal is to quantify how the contemporary global carbon cycle is changing and to assess the implication of this change for stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases levels and climate. Another objective is to identify new mechanisms influencing ecosystem-climate feedbacks. In many instances, the relative importance of different biophysical, biogeochemical, and human-mediated feedbacks are not well understood; a key goal in this context is to quantify the most important pathways. This information is important for designing effective solutions for sustainably managing ecosystems.
Together, remote sensing and atmospheric trace gas observations, models, and field measurements provide a foundation for our work. We use remote sensing products from a number of satellite missions from NASA, including the Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua, Terra, and Aura satellites, Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE), and Landsat 8. Atmospheric trace gas observations are available through collaboration with colleagues at NOAA Global Monitoring Division (GMD) and the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). We use a suite of modeling approaches to interpret these data and to assess future scenarios of change, including the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) biogeochemistry model, and new land use and biogeochemical models under development at UC Irvine.
Current Research Themes
| The Global Carbon Cycle | An important goal of this work is to develop new conceptual and observational approaches for understanding how the global carbon cycle is changing. |
| Ecosystem-Climate Feedbacks | Improving our understanding of ecosystem-climate feedbacks is necessary for creating more realistic scenarios of future change and for designing effective climate mitigation policy. |
| Fires, Land Use Change, and Deforestation | Using satellite observations, models, and field measurements to understand how human activity and climate influence fire dynamics and land cover change. |
| Isotope Tracers | Using isotopes to understand basic mechanisms regulating ecosystem function, the carbon cycle, and the Earth System. |
| Global Change in Arctic and Boreal Ecosystems | Arctic and boreal ecosystems are rapidly changing. An important research challenge is to develop a predictive understanding of how disturbance regimes, vegetation dynamics, and permafrost melt will influence ecosystem services, atmospheric composition, and the climate system. |
| Terrestrial Ecosystems and Climate Policy | Focusing attention on mitigating methane emissions in cities, evaluating greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural burning, biophysical considerations in forestry for climate protection, and the role of forests in climate preservation. |
Available Data
O2 N2 Jupyter Notebook Code
Global Fire Emissions Database version 4 with small fires (GFED4s) from 1997- 2016
- Contains monthly burned area (including small fires), total carbon, trace gas, and aerosol emissions. It also includes daily and 3-hourly emissions from 2003 to the present
Alaska Fire Emissions Database (AKFED) – daily burned area and fire emissions for the State of Alaska during the MODIS era (2000-2014). This dataset is described by Veraverbeke et al. (2015).
MISR smoke plume elevations from Borneo and Sumatra (data, paper). These are the remote sensing observations analyzed in Tosca et al. (2011).
Eddy covariance flux tower data (3 sites from a fire chronosequence near Delta Junction, Alaska during 2002-2004).
Nitrogen deposition and emission fluxes from global biomass burning (data, paper, supporting information). These fluxes are from Chen et al. (2010).
Radiocarbon measurements from annual corn plants (Zea Mays) collected across North America during the summer of 2004 as described by Hsueh et al. (2007) (paper)
Kolyma river and precipitation oxygen isotope datasets from Welp et al. (2005). Archived at AGU (data, paper).
Reduced carbon trace gas impacts on surface CO2 (readme, map, data). Maps of CO2 mixing ratio adjustments for global inversions from Suntharalingam et al. (2005).
Diurnally varying NEP fluxes from the CASA model (3 hour time step). A netcdf file from Olsen and Randerson (2004).
CASA model respiration impulse (Greens) functions from Thompson and Randerson (1999).
CASA model monthly mean NEP, NPP, and heterotrophic respiration from Randerson et al. (1997).
The Carbon-LAnd Model intercomparison Project (C-LAMP; website, paper)
Resources for Lab Members
These documents are designed to help lab group members navigate the Randerson Lab, UC Irvine, and the Wide World of Science.
- Lab Procedures & Resources. (The page is password protected.)