News 2024
OctoberEducation-Outreach
The Biometlab was quoted in article on California nut farms have seen staggering losses due to smoke from megafires
https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/farm-crop-fire-smoke-19805037.php
Our team provide solar radiation data from our California network that was ued by this team from UC Davis
We are mentoring Gelary Cardenas. She is an ES major working on her senior thesis. She is interested in using remote sensing to study the dynamics of our wetland sites that are tidal and non tidal, fresh and saline. She is looking at our met and flux data in doing this work. We are discussing questions, data etc. She is making good progress
Education-Outreach
ddb gave a presentation on How Well Do Restored Wetlands in the Delta Serve as a Natural Climate Solution? to the Interagency Ecological Program Climate Change Project Work Team https://iep.ca.gov/
Publications
Yi, K. Gabriel Senay,Joshua Fisher, Lixin, Wang, Housen, Chu,Kosana Suvomarev, Georgianne Moore,Kimberly A. Novick, Mallory L. Barnes, Trevor F. Keenan, Kanishka Mallick, Xiangzhong Luo, Justine E. C. Missik, Kyle B. Delwiche, Jacob A. Nelson, Stephen P. Good, Xiangming Xiao, Steven A. Kannenberg, Arman Ahmadi, Tianxin Wang, Gil Bohrer, Marcy E. Litvak, David E. Reed, A. Christopher Oishi, Margaret S. Torn, Dennis Baldocchi 2024,Challenges and Future Directions in Quantifying Terrestrial Evapotranspiration, Water Resour. Res., 60(10), e2024WR037622, doi:https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR037622.
Jones SF, Arias-Ortiz A, Baldocchi D, et al. When and where can coastal wetland restoration increase carbon sequestration as a natural climate solution? Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures. 2024;2:e13. doi:10.1017/cft.2024.14
VisitorsSeptember
Dr. Dien Wu from CalTech and CSU visited to discuss evaporation and water use by orchards across the Central Valley. Our research interests overlap and she has novel data on orchard water use from the Wonderful Co
Education-Outreach
ddb participated on a Career Pathways Panel discussion for the Early Career Day preceeding the the annual Ameriflux meeting in Berkeley.
ddb served on the PhD Orals defense committee of Chitra Chopra, UC Davis, Atmospheric Sciences Dept Land, Air, Water Resources
Halasya Lakshmipurna Malladi is starting to work in the lab as an intern. She is taking Biometeorology and has a background in statistics and data science. She has been joining our lab meetings, too
Meetings
Many members of the Biomet Lab attended the annual Ameriflux meeting in Berkeley (Joe, Daphne, Carlos, Robert, Kyle, Arman, Koong, Kuno). And we were well represented with alumni (Cove, Jackie, Lianhong, Housen, Patty).
Presentations were given by Kyle on Fluxnet, Carlos on advection, Arman on temperature optima of photosnythesis and ddb on Ameriflux, the sum is more than the parts. Koong led sessions on remote sensing.
All lots of fun and we learned a lot
Publications
Arias-Ortiz, A., Wolfe, J., Bridgham, S. D., Knox, S., McNicol, G., Needelman, B. A., Shahan, J., Stuart-Haëntjens, E. J., Windham-Myers, L., Oikawa, P. Y., Baldocchi, D. D., Caplan, J. S., Capooci, M., Czapla, K. M., Derby, R. K., Diefenderfer, H. L., Forbrich, I., Groseclose, G., Keller, J. K., … Holmquist, J. R. (2024). Methane fluxes in tidal marshes of the conterminous United States. Global Change Biology, 30, e17462. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17462
Research
Kuno Kasak has been leading a number of field studies with our chamber systems. He is working with Joe on measuring methane fluxes from tree boles at Tonzi and at the wetlands he is sampling with Robert hot spots in the wetlands associated with azolla. It seems to hinder O2 transfer, plant material dies and is consumed to produce CH4
The batteries to our flux system at Dutch Slough were stolen. Luckily it was discovered within 24 hours and Joe bought and installed new batteries
Joe and Daphne have increased the height of the East End tower as the tules are tall
They also removed and replaced rusted tower scaffolding at Mayberry to make this site safe. thanks gang
Staff News
ddb is a recipient of the AGU Ambassador Award. We are looking forward to sharing a meal and celebrate with many from the Biomet lab this December in DC.
We held the Biometlab Picnic bbq at Dillon Beach. Great attendance and fun with the next generation, too
VisitorsAugust
Irene Monteil has returned to Spain. We thank her for all the hard work she did sampling soils and assessing changes in soil carbon at a set of our wetlands sites.
Education-Outreach
ddb lectured on Water to the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program class here in Berkeley
Hannah Adler visited the biomet lab and collaborated on wetland field sampling campaign. Hannah is an undergraduate at Harvard and is working with Jackie Mathes on a senior thesis
Meetings
ddb and Kyle Delwiche attended a workshop on Understanding the drivers and magnitudes of CH4 source-sink transitions in climate sensitive ecosystems in Orono, ME virtually. ddb gave a talk on Trials and Tribulations Measuring Methane Fluxes with Eddy Covariance over Non-Tidal and Tidal Restored Wetlands in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary
Publications
- Wang, Tianxin, Joseph Alfieri, Kanishka Mallick, Ariane Arias-Ortiz, Martha Anderson, Joshua B. Fisher, Manuela Girotto, Daphne Szutu, Joseph Verfaillie, and Dennis Baldocchi. "How advection affects the surface energy balance and its closure at an irrigated alfalfa field." Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 357 (2024): 110196. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2024.110196
Research
Delta
Kuno Kasak led a field sampling campaign at Eden Landing, Mayberry and Dutch Slough. Soil cores and fluxes of CO2, methane and N2O were sampled. It was nice chance to run our new chamber system through the paces.we thank the team of at least 10 people from the Paytan, Oiakawa, Rhew, Banfield, Matthes and Biometlabs for helping
We learned a lot, like how azolla patches in open water are methane sources
Tonzi
Kuno and Joe also did an exploratory study on methane uptake by boles and soils at Tonzi. Mostly small uptake
Staff News
Kuno Kasak from Tartuu University in Estonia returns to the BiometLab for a year as a Fulbright. We welcome Kuno and look forward to more collaborations on sampling and understanding methane and CO2 fluxes from tidal and non tidal restored wetlands in the Delta
Carlos Wang will be returning to the Biometlab as a CESU/USGS Postdoctoral Fellow. He secured funding from USGS to study evaporation from wetlands, across the Delta and US.
VisitorsJuly
Morteza Sadeghi and Ali Mokhtari from DWR and Technical University of Munchen attended the Biometlab meeting and presented their work on evaporation and soil moisture.
Education-Outreach
Daphne and ddb hosted 6 STEM students from Antioch High to the Dutch Slough wetland site. These studentsare part of a program by BioTech Partners, who is working with local schools to give students experience in science and technology. This group has summer internships with Contra Costa Water District.
Several days later 3 students from this group came to campus to visit the biomet Lab. We showed them sensors, calibration instruments, remote sensing images and did demos on soil respiration and methane production of dry and wet soils. They learned about the connections of soils, microbes, plants, air, wind and sunlight. The set of skills needed to do this work and the fun and multifaceted aspects of discovery working in this space
Meetings
ddb and Koong Yi atteneded the Remote Sensing and Fluxes Upscaling for Real-world Impact hosted by Ameriflux at LBL. Koong was one of the organizers.
As directore of the CA CESU, ddb attended the national CESU meeting. Ben Becker, our local National Park Service partner, also attended.
Publications
Bai, Y., K. Mallick, T. Hu, S. Zhang, S. Yang, and A. Ahmadi (2024), Integrating machine learning with thermal-driven analytical energy balance model improved terrestrial evapotranspiration estimation through enhanced surface conductance, Remote Sensing of Environment, 311, 114308, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2024.114308.
Mallick, K., Verfaillie, Joseph, Wang, Tianxin, Ortiz, Ariane Arias, Szutu, Daphne, Yi, Koong, Kang, Yanghui, Shortt, Robert, Hu, Tian, Sulis, Mauro, Szantoi, Zoltan, Boulet, Gilles, Fisher, Joshua B.,Baldocchi, Dennis (2024), Net fluxes of broadband shortwave and photosynthetically active radiation complement NDVI and near infrared reflectance of vegetation to explain gross photosynthesis variability across ecosystems and climate, Remote Sensing of Environment, 307, 114123, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2024.114123.
Submissions
"Methane Fluxes in Tidal Marshes of the Contiguous United States by Arias Ortiz et al was accepted by Global Change Biology
When and where can coastal wetland restoration increase carbon sequestration as a natural climate solution? by Jones et al accepted by Cambridge Coastal Futures
"Water Availability as a Key Regulator of Thermal Optimality in Terrestrial Ecosystems: Evidence from Flux Measurements and Machine Learning" by Ahmadi, Arman; Mallick, Kaniska; Yi, Koong; Baldocchi, Dennis, has been successfully submitted for publication in Global Change Biology.
VisitorsJune
Happy to host Martin Beland for another 2 weeks. He is making tons of progress advancing CANVEG as an interfaced with canopy work here and implementation of multilayer concepts into the CLM land surface model at NCAR
We hosted Prof. Youngryel Ryu from Seoul National University for a day. Ryu is a former student and is in town to deliver a keynote lecture at the LBL Ameriflux Scaling workshop
Education-Outreach
Ddb was interviewed by ABC7 news on how-climate-is-impacting-californias-wildfire-season-solution
https://abc7news.com/post/how-climate-is-impacting-californias-wildfire-season-solution/14967186/
Meetings
DDB gave a presentation on Towards Quantifying the Effects of Climate Change and Sea Level Rise on Carbon Accretion of Tidal and Non-Tidal Wetlands Exposed to a Range of Salinity along the San Francisco Bay Estuary and Delta for the Delta Research Awards Seminar Series.
Thanks to the BiometLab team for the production of close to 100 site years of data for this presentation to Delta managers and stakesholders
The Youtube presentation will be posted on https://www.youtube.com/@DeltaCouncil
DDB participated on the Science Advisory Board of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Earth and Environment program
Meetings
Daphne, Robert, visitor Irene, and ddb attended the uc lab fees wetland project meeting at uc Santa Cruz. Saturday was a wonderful field trip to Ano Nuevo Natral reserve to see elephant seals,pelicans and talk science
Publications
Yi, K., K. A. Novick, Q. Zhang, L. Wang, T. Hwang, X. Yang, K. Mallick, M. Béland, G. B. Senay, and D. D. Baldocchi (2024), Responses of Marginal and Intrinsic Water-Use Efficiency to Changing Aridity Using FLUXNET Observations, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 129(6), e2023JG007875, doi:https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JG007875.
Research
Our visitor, Irene Alorda Montiel, led a team (Armand, Daphne and Joe, to resample soil carbon profiles at Hill Slough, several years after restoration. It will be interesting to see the change over time with the influx of new sediments, organic matter etc
VisitorsMay
Irene Alorda Montiel from Ariane Arias Ortiz lab in Barcelona will be a summer visitor in the Biomet lab. She will help us improve our sampling of soil carbon at the tidal wetland sites. Welcome
https://mers.uab.cat/?member=irene-alorda-montiel
Meetings
DDB attended the UC ANR Academic Regional Meeting 3, in Stockton, May 31. Got to meet a number of CE specialists and county agents working on water, orchards, rice.
Robert Shortt and Kyle Delwiche attended the State of the Bay Estuary conference in Oakland. Robert presented a poster on Subsidence and Sea Level Rise: Impacts of Land Use on Levee Stability
Staff News
Tianxin Carlos Wang graduated with a PhD. Congratulations
VisitorsApril
Sebastian Wolf from ETH Zurich, a former postdoc, dropped by for lunch on his annual visit to service sites at Sagehen forest. Always great to see him
Education-Outreach
On April 23 we hosted 100 4th graders from Los Medanos Elementary school in Pittsburg to the Dutch Slough field site. We say a dead beaver, osprey, great blue heron etc. Thanks to Tyler Anthony from CARB, Molly Ferril and Kate Bandy from DWR, the bat expert from UC Davis. as well as Daphne, Kyle and Robert from the Biomet lab. It was lots of fun, great group of kids. It was a beautiful day, the students were engaged and curious.
We hosted our 3rd annual field trip to Dutch Slough with Knightsen and Old River Elementary schools. It was a cold and rainy day. We thank our partners for helping mentor the students. Dylan Chapple from the Delta Council, Molly Ferrill from DWR, Tyler Anthony from CARB, Robert Shortt and Daphne Szutu from the Biomet lab and a fish/wildlife expert from Davis..
Despite the rain and cold, the kids were very flexible and seemed to enjoy the experience, as well as attending parents
Meetings
BASC seminar Tianxin Carlos Wang/Baldocchi Group Don't be a drag, just be a queen: the reign of surface energy balance under advection at an irrigated alfalfa site
Publications
Mallick, K., Verfaillie, Joseph, Wang, Tianxin, Ortiz, Ariane Arias, Szutu, Daphne, Yi, Koong, Kang, Yanghui, Shortt, Robert, Hu, Tian, Sulis, Mauro, Szantoi, Zoltan, Boulet, Gilles, Fisher, Joshua B. Baldocchi, Dennis(2024). "Net fluxes of broadband shortwave and photosynthetically active radiation complement NDVI and near infrared reflectance of vegetation to explain gross photosynthesis variability across ecosystems and climate." Remote Sensing of Environment 307: 114123.
Staff News
Tianxin 'Carlos' Wang submitted his dissertation, Bending fluxes in an alfalfa field: a study of energy, water, and carbon dynamics' to campus today and is now Dr. Wang. Congratulations
Submissions
Water scarcity in semi-arid California compromises perennial alfalfa’s high yield and carbon sinking potentials. Journal of Hydrology, Tianxin Wang, Kanishka Mallick, Joe Verfaille, Daphne Szutu, Dennis Baldocchi.
When and where can coastal wetland restoration increase carbon sequestration as a natural climate solution? Authors (Order TBD): Scott F. Jones, Ariane Arias-Ortiz, Dennis Baldocchi, Meagan Eagle, Daniel A. Friess, Catrina Gore, Greg Noe7, Stefanie Nolte, Patty Oikawa, Adina Paytan, Jacqueline L. Raw, Brian J. Roberts, Kerrylee Rogers, Charles Schutte, Camille Stagg, Karen M. Thorne, Eric Ward, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Erik S. Yando Coastal Futures
VisitorsMarch
Prof. Josep Penuelas from Barcelona returns to visit the Biometlab this week, continuing our multi-year series of visits.
Been informed we will have the pleasure of hosting Kuno Kasak as a Fulbright scholar, from Estonia, for a year starting this August. Fantastic timing.
Education-Outreach
Our work with Susanna Tringe was profiled on ABC Bay Area News 7 on a story Study Links Sea Level Rise to Methane Release
https://archive.org/details/KGO_20240302_010000_ABC7_News_500PM/start/960/end/1020
The Wetland team of Patty Oikawa, Robert Shortt, Adina Paytan, Barbara Haya, Chris Gough and Dennis Baldocchi met with a team from Google, including Randy Spock the Carbon Credits and Removals Lead at Google to discuss Coastal Wetland Restoration for Climate Mitigation
We met with the 5th grade science teachers from Knightsen Elementary to plan the upcoming field trip to Dutch Slough on April 4. This will be the third year of hosting this group.
We also had a planning meeting with teachers from Los Medanos Elementary in Pittsburg. they plan to bring about 100 students to the Dutch Slough site in late April
Publications
Novick, K. A., Keenan, TF, Anderegg, WRL, Normile, CP, Runkle, BRK, Oldfield, EE, Shrestha,G, Baldocchi, DD, Evans, ME, Randerson, JT, Sanderman, J. Torn, MS, Trugman, AT, Williams, CA (2024). "We need a solid scientific basis for nature-based climate solutions in the United States." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121(14): e2318505121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2318505121
Staff News
We have 2 undergraduates starting to work in the Biomet lab
Izzie Kaye Wamsteker is working with Daphne and is learning about the PepprMnt model for calculating methane fluxes in the wetland. During spring break Izzie joined us on a field trip to the delta
Gelary Cardenas will start working on measuring greenhouse gas fluxes with our chamber system as part of her Environmental Science Senior thesis.
Submissions
Mallick et al. RSE-D-23-01335R1
Title: Net Fluxes of Broadband Shortwave and Photosynthetically Active Radiation Complement NDVI and Near Infrared Reflectance of Vegetation to explain Gross Photosynthesis Variability Across Ecosystems and Climate.Remote Sensing of Environment. accepted
VisitorsFebruary
Ivan Janssens from Univ of Antwerp is on short term visit to Berkeley with Margaret Torn. We got together to discuss fluxes and flux networks. Ivan was on the early team of EuroFlux in the Ceulemans group and mentored my former postdoc Jorge Curiel Yuste.
we also hosted Ivan and his spouse Inge on a tour of our delta field sites. Nice to share ideas on wetlands
Brian Bailey of UC Davis gave a great seminar on his Helios model system that computes turbulence, radiative transfer and mass and energy exchange over 3D canopies. This lecture is the Future of Biometeorology
Education-Outreach
Joe has set up the Arable meteorological sensors at Bouldin corn for the public to provide weather data for duck hunters
https://biometlab.cnr.berkeley.edu/dailydata.php?screen=arable&sid=BC
We plan to install another Arable at Dutch Slough for educational purposes for students at Knightsen Elementary and for colleagues working at Dutch Slough from Davis, DWR, USGS, etc
ddb gave a public lecture on Fog Sunday Feb 25, 2 pm at the Tomales Historical Society
You thought you knew fog? There’s so much more to this phenomenon in nature, myth, and mystery. FOG. Clarifying the cloudy, fuzzy, misty, murky, soupy thing we live with
https://www.tomaleshistory.com/events/2024/2/25/fog-lecture-2024
Publications
Baldocchi, D., K. Novick, T. Keenan, and M. Torn (2024), AmeriFlux: Its Impact on our understanding of the ‘breathing of the biosphere’, after 25 years, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 348, 109929, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2024.109929.
Baldocchi, D. D., and A. Arias Ortiz (2024), Alternating Conditional Expectations: Introducing a Non-Parametric Statistical Method to Interpret Long-Term Greenhouse Gas Flux Measurements Over Semi-Arid and Wetland Ecosystems, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 129(3), e2023JG007818, doi:https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JG007818.
Research
Troy Magney and his team from UC Davis installed the T SWIFT system to measure SIF at Tonzi Ranch. Great to get this new way of sensing the canopy. Plus Sophie Ruehr of the Keenan lab installed a thermal camera at the site.
We are also adding more point dendrometers from a sensor in Czech Republic
Submissions
The Ameriflux review was accepted by Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
The Alternating Conditional Expectations paper was accepted by Journal of Geophysical Research, Biogeosciences
VisitorsJanuary
Cove Sturtevant from NEON came to visit. Gave a lab seminar on the power of ANN to extract information on controls of fluxes and to extract response functions.
Cove is former postdoc and wrote much of our matlab processing code. great to see him again and learn.
Nico Bambach from UC Davis gave the biometlab seminar presentation. Nico is expert on evaporation measurements and modeling from almonds and showed us the many comparisons they are making and how almond evaporation is varying over the year. It uses up to 10 mm/d during the growing season.
Other
ddb was an external reviewer of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, a similar unit at our partner campus. Also met lots of people and students. Very interesting exercise to do. One learns more about the nuts and bolts of how a University Unit functions and a chance to think about where we in the environmental sciences should be going.
Publications
Hartman, W. H., C. P. B. d. Mesquita, S. M. Theroux, C. Morgan-Lang, D. D. Baldocchi, and S. G. Tringe Multiple microbial guilds mediate soil methane cycling along a wetland salinity gradient, mSystems, 0(0), e00936-00923, doi:10.1128/msystems.00936-23.
Volk, J. M., ...Tianxin Wang.. et al. (2024), Assessing the accuracy of OpenET satellite-based evapotranspiration data to support water resource and land management applications, Nature Water, doi:10.1038/s44221-023-00181-7.
Baldocchi, D., and K. Mallick (2024), Towards sharing water better with near real-time maps on evaporative water use by crops and natural vegetation, Nature Water, doi:10.1038/s44221-023-00183-5.
Visitors
Martin Beland has returned for an extended stay in the Biomet Lab. Welcome back Martin
Iryna Dronova gave a presentation on remote sensing of the delta and our field sites. Wonderful survey of products and trends in clusters at our sites. Lots of ideas for future collaboration among our groups
Einara Zahn, from Princeton, gave a Biomet lab seminar on flux partitioning, large eddy simulation and Monin Obukov Similarity theory. All state of art models and measurements. Check out her recent papers.
https://cee.princeton.edu/people/einara-zahn-0