This project prototypes a new approach to constrain soil carbon by leveraging unprecedented lidar observations from NASA GEDI, ICESat-2 and LVIS and advanced Ecosystem Demography model.

NASA's Early Career Investigator Program in Earth Science has chosen Assistant Research Professor Lei Ma's proposal as one of the select few to receive funding. Titled “Constraining forest carbon fluxes by leveraging spaceborne lidar observations and mechanistic ecosystem modeling”, this project aims to improve our understanding of soil carbon dynamics by utilizing cutting-edge lidar technology from NASA's GEDI, ICESat-2, and LVIS missions, combined with advanced Ecosystem Demography modeling. Collaborators include GEOG Professor and Associate Chair George Hurtt and Lesley Ott from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Ma's project proposes a novel approach that leverages the unprecedented wealth of data provided by NASA's lidar missions and advanced ecosystem modeling. This approach builds upon their recent successes, where similar techniques were used to constrain spatial heterogeneity of aboveground carbon stocks and fluxes. By extending these methodologies to soil carbon dynamics, the team hopes to unlock the full potential of lidar observations for improving terrestrial carbon modeling on a large scale.

“I'm thrilled to receive this award! It backs me up to explore the super power of decadal advances in remote sensing and ecosystem modeling to better understand our Earth—the place we live and count on,“ said Ma.

Quantifying soil carbon stocks and fluxes has been a major challenge and source of uncertainty in terrestrial carbon cycle modeling. This challenge is partly due to the scarcity of direct observations across large spatial scales. The standard approach, adopted by Global Carbon Budget and CMIP6, is to drive models with historical land use data for hundreds of years to simulate vegetation dynamics (e.g., deforestation, recovery) and impacts on soil carbon from the past to the present. The land use data (Land Use Harmonization, LUH, LUH2) required to drive the class of models was previously developed by an international team led by UMD.

The significance of Ma’aproject is underscored by the competitive nature of the ECIP-ES program, which received 209 proposals and selected only 36 for funding. The program is designed to support outstanding scientific research and career development of scientists and engineers at the early stage of their professional careers.

Main image: Logo of NASA's Early Career Investigator Program