April, 2022
He will present his work at summer Graduate Fellows Symposium and All-Scientist Meeting at Kellogg Biological Station.
"Landscape Dynamics of Drylands across Greater Central Asia: People, Societies and Ecosystems" cover art is released.
This volume is a compilation of studies on interactions of changes in land cover, land use and climate with people, societies and ecosystems in drylands of Greater Central Asia. It explores the effects of collapse of socialist governance and management systems on land use in various parts of Central Asia, including former Soviet Union republics, Mongolia and northern drylands of China. Often, regional land-atmosphere feedbacks may have large global importance. Remote sensing is a primary tool in studying vast dryland territories where in situ observations are sporadic. State-of-the-art methods of satellite remote sensing combined with GIS and models are used to tackle science questions and provide an outlook of current changes at land surface and potential scenarios for the future.
Congratulations to LEES Lab Ph.D. student Gabriela Shirkey on being awarded with Graduate Research Fellowship of NSF!
John R., J. Chen, Y. Kim, Z. Ouyang, J. Xiao, H. Park, C. Shao, Y. Zhang, A. Amarjargal, and J. Qi. 2016. Differentiating anthropogenic modification and precipitation-driven change on vegetation productivity on the Mongolian Plateau. Landscape Ecology 31:547–566.
Congratulations and good luck!
Congratulations to LEES Lab Ph.D. student Cheyenne Lei on being awarded with Thompson Endowment Award and a Research Scholars Award from the College of Social Science!
Congratulations to LEES Lab Ph.D. student Gabriela Shirkey on being awarded with Thompson Endowment Award and a Research Scholars Award from the College of Social Science!
Congratulations to LEES Lab Ph.D. student Cheyenne Lei on being selected as a recipient for the KBS LTER Fall 2019 Research Fellowship!
Congratulations to Hogeun Park on unanimously passing his PhD defense, titled "Urban Transformation in Transitional Economies: Lessons From the Mongolian Plateau".
Congratulations to Gabriela Shirkey on completing and unanimously passing her "straight-to-PhD" defense, titled "Spatiotemporal Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Agricultural Landscape Production".
Congratulations to Cheyenne Lei on being awarded a W.K. Kellogg Biological Station summer fellowship! This funding is provided by funds from the MSU Graduate School that are used to encourage graduate students to develop research and/or participate in educational programs at KBS.
Congratulations to Gabriela Shirkey on being awarded an Environmental Science and Policy Program (ESPP) Doctoral Recruiting Fellowship! ESPP Doctoral Recruiting Fellowships are awarded to students that have demonstrated academic excellence and contribute to a diverse educational community.
LEES Lab welcomes their newest Ph.D student, Pietro Sciusco.
LEES Lab welcomes Dr. David Reed, a Postdoctoral Research Associate for the NASA Carbon project. An interdisciplinary researcher at heart, David grew up in Michigan and received Bachelor and Master degrees in Climate Physics and Atmospheric Science from University of Michigan. David served as a visiting professor of physics at Dickinson College for a year, teaching meteorology, climate and physics, and then he received a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Ankur Desai at UW-Madison. During his time in Madison, David worked on improving observations of lake thermodynamics and carbon fluxes, collaborating with the Long Term Ecological Research North Temperate Lakes group.
LEES congratulates Dr. Changliang Shao, who was hired as professor with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' National Hulunber Grassland Ecosystem Observation and Research Station. Dr. Shao has been a postdoc with LEES Lab for five years.
The journal Ecological Processes, where Dr. Jiquan Chen serves as editor-in-cheif, will be accepted for inclusion in Scopus. Scopus is a world-renowned indexing service—the journals included in it are known to be highly cited and relevant in their field, have a diverse and knowledgeable editorial board, and have the most robust editorial policies.
Ecological Processes is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal devoted to quality publications in ecological studies with a focus on the underlying processes responsible for the dynamics and functions of ecological systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Read the full story on the journal's website.
At this year's annual IALE (International Association of Landscape Ecology) conference, the next US-IALE President was announced as Janet Silbernagel, a LEES alumna. Janet was the first PhD to graduate from LEES when the lab was at Michigan Technological University. Currently, she leads the Landscape Conservation Lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Congratulations Janet!
Hexagon Geospatial annually hosts the HxGN LIVE EDU contest for researchers and innovators around the world, attracting unique efforts and creative expansion in the field of geospatial analysis. Our own members Vincenzo Giannico and Raffaelle Lafortezza took first place with their recently published paper in Remote Sensing Estimating Stand Volume and Above-Ground Biomass of Urban Forests Using LiDAR. In this research, an innovative methodology estimated biomass in urban areas within forested areas of Milan, Italy with the aid of LiDAR data. In combination with Hexagon Geospatial software (ERDAS IMAGINE) and modeling, the analysis in this research not only estimated the amount of biomass present in the study area, but advances our ability to estimate carbon sinks in urban areas.
Both LEES members will accept their award at HxGN LIVE in Las Vegas June 13-16, 2017 and present their research. Visit Hexagon Geospatial's blog for the full story.
Citation: Giannico, V., R. Lafortezza, R. John, G. Sanesi, L. Pesola, and J. Chen. 2016. Estimating stand volume and above-ground biomass of urban forests using LiDAR. Remote Sensing 8: 339; doi:10.3390/rs8040339
Congratulations to Gabriela Shirkey on earning MSU's Graduate School Academic Achievement Graduate Assistantship (AAGA). Assistantships are awarded to incoming students who will enhance the educational diversity of the student body and whose record shows leadership potential and demonstrated academic achievement. We're proud to now host two AAGA awardees in the LEES Lab.
Land use, land cover changes, and ecosystem-specific management practices are increasingly recognized for their roles in mediating the climatic effects on ecosystem structure and function. As demonstrated by some scholars, human activities can influence C fluxes and storage far more than climatic changes. All of these activities require a CO2-equivalent amount of energy ("social C flux") to offset the actual amount of C sequestered by the ecosystems and landscapes. A complete life cycle assessment (LCA) is needed to account for the actual sequestration strength at different spatial and temporal scales.
New funding from NASA will sponsor our next carbon cycle study at Kellogg Biological Station as well as in the Kalamazoo watershed.
New student opportunities Download graduate position announcement | Download Postdoc position details Positions for 1 Postdoc, 2 PhD students, and 2 Undergraduate students are open starting fall 2017. If you are interested in applying, please contact Dr. Jiquan Chen with your CV, GRE scores, TOEFL (if applicable) and experience.
Congratulations to Cheyenne Lei on earning this competitive assistantship. The Graduate School offers the AAGA to students whose enrollment enhances the educational diversity of the student body and whose record shows leadership potential and demonstrated academic achievement.
Edit: Position closed We are offering position(s) to undergraduates for the 2016-2017 academic year. Successful applicant(s) will participate in our project, Coupled Human and Natural Systems on the Mongolian Plateau", which examines and models the changes of the natural and human systems on the plateau as well as the critical feedbacks between them over recent decades. Experience in socioeconomic and environmental science, data management, lab equipment, is welcome, but not necessary. Prospective students may and contact Professor Jiquan Chen with questions and interest.
After a summer of fieldwork on the Mongolian Plateau, Drs. Jiquan Chen and Ranjeet John have collected new data for the CNH project. Photos of the Gobi Desert and the Inner Mongolian sites have also been uploaded, describing the landscape of each plot visited, under "land cover photos".
Dr. Jiquan Chen is the new Editor-in-Chief at Ecological Processes, starting February 1, 2016. For journal information or for manuscript submissions, email Dr. Chen.
About Ecological ProcessesEcological Processes presents a unique niche for ecological publications and embraces a wide, interdisciplinary scope of ideas and an integrated, comprehensive approach to each one. Though the journal specifically welcomes articles that integrate natural and social processes at appropriately broad spatial and temporal scales, we publish research regarding all aspects of biological, chemical, physical and hydrological processes of ecosystem and landscape dynamics across spatial and temporal scales.
