[Enviro-lunch] Enviro-lunch (3/28): Dr. Meng Zhao about evapotranspiration modeling

[Kyungjin Min]

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Hello all,



Next Monday (3/28) Dr. Meng Zhao from Stanford University will present his
research about plant-water relationship modeling. Please join us between
12-1 pm (pacific) via zoom.



https://ucmerced.zoom.us/j/175736103





*Title:* From plant to planet: Leveraging plant-water relations to build a
more sustainable world



*Abstract*: The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus is central to sustainable
development. At the foundation of the WEF nexus is the health of the
biosphere, in which vegetation and water interactions play a critical role.
However, vegetation is facing a series of global changes. Elevating
atmospheric CO2, a warming climate, and increasingly common droughts and
heatwaves all have competing effects on plant-water relations, leaving
their overall impacts on the WEF nexus unclear. In addition, human land
management directly changes plant-water relations. These human influences
are often superimposed on global change impacts to further complicate
future WEF nexus security. In this presentation, I will first investigate
two competing drought effects on plant-water relations using multiple
remote sensing observations. I find that CMIP6 Earth system models
systematically misrepresent the balance of the observed two competing
effects. I will discuss how to improve this systematic error in Earth
system models. Secondly, I will present a case study to illustrate that the
impact of human revegetation on water resources is difficult to predict and
can be rife with unintended consequences, such as sucking up rainfall and
depleting soil moisture and groundwater. These results have important
implications for developing effective solutions for sustainably managing
water resources and ecosystems under a changing climate.




*Bio: *
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Meng Zhao is a postdoctoral scholar in Remote Sensing of Ecohydrology lab
at Stanford University. Meng studies the intersection between hydrology and
ecology, and their broader implications on climate, society, and policy
making. He employs a variety of approaches including satellite remote
sensing, GIS, Earth system modeling, and machine learning. Meng holds a
Ph.D. in Earth system science from the University of California Irvine.





Sincerely,

co-host: KJ Min & Manisha Dolui

Faculty coordinator: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

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Spring 2022 Enviro-Lunch Schedule

*date*

*speaker*

*title*

*1/31*

Mariela Garcia Arrendondo
@ Umass-Amherst

Root-mediated weathering

*2/7*

Michael Philben
@ Hope College

Rethinking carbon and nitrogen isotope fractionation during soil organic
matter decomposition

*2/14*

Alyssa Griffin*
@ UC Davis

The role of coastal marine sediments in carbon cycling from local to global
scales

*2/21*

Presidents’ day



*2/28*

Katherine Heckman
@ USDA

Density fractionation and soil carbon stabilization

*3/7*

Bhavna Arora
@ LBNL

Reactive transport modeling

*3/14*

Darian Smercina
@ PNNL

Free N fixing under switchgrass (Linking microbial scale processes to
ecosystem function)

*3/21*

spring break



*3/28*

Meng Zhao
@ Stanford U

Plant-water relationship (evapotranspiration) modeling

*4/4*

Hannah Naughton
@ LBNL

Root vs. topographic generation of redox anomalies on a subalpine hillslope
and floodplain

*4/11*

Michael Rowley
@ LBNL

Ca-mediated soil organic carbon stabilization

*4/18*

Weiyu Li*
@ Stanford U

Data-driven hydraulic modeling

*4/25*

Daniel Zuleta

@ Smithsonian Institute

Tree mortality in tropical ecosystems

*5/2*

Genevieve Noyce
@ Smithsonian Institute

Greenhouse gas emissions from wetland with climate change
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