This event is postponed to a future date to be determined.

Monitoring Dryland Ecosystem Function with Multi-Source and Multi-Scale Remote Sensing

Speaker: Dr. Matt Dannenberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences, University of Iowa

Hosted by: Dr. Chris Jones, Senior Research Staff and Faculty Fellow, Center for Geospatial Analytics, NC State

Summary: Drylands make up ~40% of Earth’s land surface and are home to >2 billion people and numerous rare and endemic organisms. Their large size and dependence on intermittent water availability also make drylands important regulators of the global carbon cycle, but monitoring dryland ecosystem function with remote sensing poses many challenges not encountered in more humid regions. In this talk, Matt discusses the potential for multi-source and multi-resolution remote sensing of dryland primary production (carbon fixation through photosynthesis) and evapotranspiration, ranging from near-surface sensors at individual sites to global-scale satellite-based approaches.

About the speaker: Dr. Matt Dannenberg is a global change ecologist specializing in responses of forests and drylands to climate variability and change, especially to human-caused changes in the water cycle. He received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography just a short drive down I-40 (UNC Chapel Hill) and then did his postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona, where he discovered his love for drylands. He’s been an assistant professor at the University of Iowa since 2019. In Matt’s free time, he enjoys building things, playing disc golf and Magic: The Gathering, reading sci-fi/fantasy novels, and listening to death metal.