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2013 Year in Review

· 3 min read
Mike Dietze
Mike Dietze
PEcAn Project PI

A roundup of PEcAn project activities and highlights from 2013.

Highlights from the year include conference presentations, new collaborations, and continued progress in connecting ecosystem models with observations and data synthesis workflows.

Conferences and Presentations​

Presentations at AGU 2013 (December 2013)​

The following PEcAn presentations occurred at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting:

  • Viskari, Dietze, Desai: "Model-data assimilation of multiple phenological observations to constrain and forecast leaf area"
  • Serbin, Dietze, Desai, LeBauer, Viskari, Kooper, McHenry, Townsend: "Assimilation of Leaf and Canopy Spectroscopic Data to Improve the Representation of Vegetation Dynamics in Terrestrial Ecosystem Models"

Presentations at ESA 2013 (August 2013)​

LeBauer and Dietze hosted a lunch-time workshop: "Combining Field Measurements and Ecosystem Models"

Additional PEcAn presentations at the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN:

  • Dietze: "Assimilating forest inventory data into models"
  • LeBauer, Dietze, Jaiswal, Kooper, Long, Serbin, Wang: "Reducing uncertainty through data-driven model development"
  • Hardiman, Serbin, Mantooth, Kennedy, Dietze: "Assimilating PALSAR remote sensing data to reduce uncertainty in ED2 predictions of forest biomass dynamics following disturbance"

Kooper presents PEcAn at XSEDE13 (July 2013)​

Kooper R, K McHenry, M Dietze, D LeBauer, S Serbin, A. Desai. 2013. Ecological Cyberinfrastructure and HPC Towards More Accurately Predicting Future Levels of Greenhouse Gases. Proceedings of XSEDE13: Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment

Publications​

PEcAn highlighted in Faculty of 1000 review (July 2013)​

LeBauer et al. 2013 was recommended in two different reviews on F1000. You can read the reviews at http://f1000.com/prime/718024607

LeBauer article in R Journal (June 2013)​

LeBauer D, M. Dietze, B. Bolker. 2013. Translating Probability Density Functions: From R to BUGS and Back Again. R Journal Vol. 5/1, June, 207-209

Feng paper on photosynthesis module (December 2013)​

Feng X, M Dietze. 2013. Scale-dependence in the effects of leaf economic traits on photosynthesis: Bayesian parameterization of photosynthesis models. New Phytologist 200(4): 1132–1144 DOI: 10.1111/nph.12454 link

This paper describes the statistical model underlying the PEcAn photosynthesis module.

Grants and Projects​

The proposal "Assimilation of imaging spectroscopy data to improve the representation of vegetation dynamics in ecosystem models" led by Shawn Serbin, with Mike Dietze and Phil Townsend as co-PIs, was recommended for funding by NASA. This project focuses on assimilating hyperspectral data in the PEcAn framework by building a Radiative Transfer Model into the Ecosystem Demography model.

Teaching and Outreach​

Dietze teaches course in Ecological Forecasting (Fall 2013)​

GE585 – Ecological Forecasting and Informatics was taught by Mike Dietze at Boston University in Fall of 2013. The course materials are available on GitHub.

Undergrads exposed to model-data fusion (June 2013)​

Mike Dietze was invited back to Harvard Forest to present PEcAn to the summer REU students (June 12). Student feedback highlighted their newfound appreciation for how data and models can work together iteratively and how modeling is useful to scientific progress.

Spring Semester 2013 Talks (Spring 2013)​

Mike Dietze presented talks on the PEcAn project at the Boston University EBE Seminar series (April 1), Harvard University's ClimateTEA (April 2), and at Harvard Forest (May 2).

Community Building​

Student PEcAn Programming Positions (March 2013)​

The project advertised for web programmers to develop PEcAn and BETYdb front-end and back-end features, seeking skills in PHP, SQL, Ruby, R, C, or Fortran.