The eastern U.S. is a predominately forested region where trees provide critical ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water purification, and habitat conservation. This region has evolved dramatically over 400 years due to intense logging, land clearance for agriculture, and subsequent natural reforestation, leading to drastic shifts in species composition and ecosystem dynamics. It now faces a range of threats that challenge the health and sustainability of its forests, including climate change and urban expansion. Despite these pressing concerns, there has been a surprising absence of research specifically focusing on the impacts of Land Cover and Land Use Changes (LCLUC) on climate variabilities in the eastern U.S. This oversight represents a significant research gap, especially considering the key roles of this region’s forests in the regional climate systems through their influence on carbon cycles, energy balance, and water cycles. The overarching goal of the proposed study is to build forest digital twins in the Eastern U.S. at high spatial resolution by synthesizing emerging airborne and satellite remotely sensed data and to integrate these remotely sensed variables as constraints for the CLM-FATES model to evaluate land cover land use changes (including forest dieback, insect outbreak, disturbance, and harvest) on climate variabilities. We will calibrate and validate the model at NEON sites and then generate continental-scale predictions under different climate change and LCLUC scenarios.

To fill these knowlege gaps, we have develop data-model synthesis framework in the following figure