I am a broadly trained ecologist interested in understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity change across scales from individual organisms to the entire biosphere. I develop data-model synthesis frameworks that integrate multi-spectral remote sensing, LiDAR, hyperspectral imaging, field sampling, and ecological monitoring networks with Bayesian hierarchical models and Earth System models. For example, I characterize habitats using remote sensing and apply statistical models to predict how these habitats and climate change jointly drive biodiversity shifts. To understand the consequences of biodiversity changes, I use Earth System Models and ecological models to quantify biodiversity feedbacks to climate systems. Another key area of my work involves quantifying the regeneration potentials of global forests and their fundamental roles in food web dynamics, including seed production and seedling recruits. I investigate how these processes respond to climate, habitat, species traits, and the consumers that rely on them.

Prior to joining Duke University, I served as a tenure-track assistant professor at the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at the Pennsylvania State University. I conducted postdoctral research with Dr. Jim Clark and Dr. Jennifer Swenson at the Nicholas School of the Environment. For my doctoral research, I worked with Drs. Conghe Song, Jim Clark, Erika Wise, Diego Riveros-Iregui, and Allen Hurlbert to understand how vegetation phenology is influenced by climate change, extreme weather events, and urbanization.

Xiaolu is interested in the interactions between plant phenology, terrestrial ecosystems, and the climate system. She uses a combination of ground observations, remote sensing records, statistical models, and Earth System models to (1) characterize the biodiversity-phenology-climate relationship and how it influences ecosystem functions; (2) quantify the feedbacks of species composition and ecosystem structure change to climate systems; (3) evaluate phenology variability and improve phenology modeling in Earth system models; (4) investigate impacts of phenological shifts on land-atmosphere interactions. She moves to Duke University after completing a one-year postdoc at Penn State in our lab. She worked with Dr. Toby R. Ault for her postdoctoral and dissertation research work.

Hanshi is a Ph.D. student in the University Program in Ecology (UPE) at Duke University. Before moving to Duke, she was a Ph.D. student in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Ecology at Penn State. Her research interests focus on understanding the joint effects of climate and habitat change on vegetation phenology across broad biogeogragraphic scales. She is also interested in quantifying the subsequent impact of phenology changes on terrestrial ecosystem functions. She worked with Dr. Weiqiang Chen and Dr. Hua Cai at the Institute of Urban Environment at Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2021 to 2023 before joining the lab.

Yu Wei is an Environment Ph.D. student in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke university. Prior to joining Duke, she was a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Penn State. She is interested in understanding biodiversity changes using combined LiDAR and hyperspectral remote sensing. Her research projects seeks to apply deep learning and other advanced computing models to understand structural and spectral diversity of forest ecosystem under global change. She has a very strong background in remote sensing and worked with Dr. Mi Wang at the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS) at Wuhan University.