Student Posters Repository

Through the large amounts of mass and energy exchanged with the atmosphere, tropical ecosystems play an important role in the global climate and carbon cycle. However, seasonal variation in tropical vegetation activity is not well represented in land surface models. These models are the terrestrial component of Earth System Models, which are currently our most important tool for future climate prediction. Given the large ecosystem-atmosphere feedbacks, the incorrect simulation of seasonality in the tropics may affect climate and carbon exchange predictions from Earth System Models. In my doctoral research, I propose three projects to help improve the simulation of tropical ecosystems’ seasonality. In the first study, I looked at model simulations of intra-annual variation in gross primary productivity (GPP) and its relationship with climate at the regional level. In the second project, I am looking at the effect of changes in land cover on the seasonality of carbon and water exchange with the atmosphere. In the last project, I am testing the incorporation of different phenology formulations in a carbon model and how they affect GPP simulations for tropical forests.