News 2025

Meetings

ddb and Carlos Wang attended the 36th conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology in Denver

AGFOREST Scaling Fluxes from Leaf to Canopy in Broadleaf Forests Using Canveg2: Model Evaluation and Analysis of Drought-Heat Stress ResponseMartin Beland, Laval University, Quebec, QC, Canada; and G. B. Bonan, H. kobayashi, and D. D. Baldocchi

We thank Kyaw Tha Paw U,  Larry Hipps and Carlos Wang for organizing a session on Meeting the Challenges of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and Biometeorology: Past, Present, and Future.  They invited a cross section of Biomet lab alumni and current members to talk on

9.1 From Plant Ecophysiology to Planetary Boundary Layer Studies: An Academic Journey in Dennis Baldocchi’s Biomet Lab (Invited Presentation)Camilo Rey-Sanchez, North Carolina State University

9.2 Inspiring Future Generations, from First Principles Martin Beland, Laval University, Quebec, QC, Canada

 9.3 Estimating and Upscaling the Baldocchi Flux Using Natural Neural Network Tianxin Wang, Berkeley

9.4 From Wetlands to Woodlands: Adventures in Scaling Ecosystem-Atmosphere Fluxes across Terrestrial-Aquatic Interfaces Jaclyn Hatala Matthes, Harvard University, Acton, MA; and J. W. Munger, N. Hegwood, S. A. Jurado, and J. Gewirtzman

9.5 Water, Water, Everywhere  Elke Eichelmann, Univ. College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland

Carlos and ddb served on the Panel Discussion on Challenges and Opportunities in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology and Biometeorology

I was also pleased to see Cove Sturtevant and Youngryel Ryu attend the meeting. We had a wonderful set of lunches and dinners with the group through the meeting. Thanks all. Been a pleasure and honor to mentor you all and it is great to hear your lives are going well, both personally and professionally. At the end of the day this is our key obligation, to educate, train and inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers and experts

Staff News

Kuno Kasak gave an exit seminar on his work in the Biometlab this past 10 months as a Fulbright Fellow. He brought tons of energy, field work, ideas and paper drafts in this short time. Efforts included extensive sampling of soils and chamber fluxes over soiils and azolla, a new study, bootlegged at Tonzi on methane uptake, or emission, from trees, soils and the ecosystem. 

He and his family hosted a nice party with Estonia food this past Saturday.  He will be missed but we will continue to collaborate.. Thanks Kuno

Submissions

We got some good news on reviews of submitted papers.

Our paper, led by Arman Ahmadi "Interpretable Machine Learning Reveals the Crucial Role of Water Availability in Regulating Thermal Optimality of Terrestrial Ecosystems" [Paper #2024JH000445RR] to Journal of Geophysical Research - Machine Learning and Computation. will be published after minor revisions

A paper we are working with Ngoc Nguyen, Widespread underestimation of rain-induced carbon losses across global drylands" (NGS-2024-10-02772A), will also be published after minor revisions

And a paper by Camillo Rey Sanchez on Explaining Hot Spots of Methane Flux in a Restored Wetland: The Role of Water Level, Soil Disturbance, and Methanotrophy." was reviewed by ERL and needs a few more revisions

Education-Outreach

ddb lectured on the Land Grant Universities and Agricultural Experiment Stations to ESPM 201a

 The Biomet Lab led another field trip of 5th grade science students from Knightsen and Old River elementary schools to our Dutch Slough Ameriflux site. Thanks to scientists from DWR, Molly Ferrill, Tyler Anthony, USGS, Karen Thorne and her interns,  UCDavis Jason Riggio, and our team of Robert, Kyle and Joe for helping, plus Kuno from Estonia

 i encourage all environmental scientists to adopt a local school and do at least one day of out reach per year. Field trips are an experience so many students are missing out today. They learned how peat was formed, how we measure Co2 and methane fluxes, about the Delta, California rivers, salinity gradients in the SF bay estuary, the abundance of birds...plus otter poop. Knightsen has a special place in my heart. It is in east Contra Costa county and doesnt get the attention from faculty like Oakland and Berkeley schools. It is where i learned to swim and where i attended 4H meetings as a kid. The kids are so curious and attentive. Plus a wonderful spring day with a nice Delta breeze

The Fluxnet project was profiled in the College Breakthrough magazine

https://nature.berkeley.edu/breakthroughs/sp25/world-climate-data

Meetings

Robert Shortt gave the Berkeley Atmospheric Science Center seminar as part of his require for an exit presentation for his PhD. Vy nice over view of the carbon dioxide and methane fluxes measured over our Delta network

ddb gave the ESPM Distinguished Faculty Spotlight lecture on Biometeorology@Berkeley 

https://berkeley.app.box.com/s/cuc29sup8y221zm9qtsy8ow2gc9jslhd

Staff News

ddb learned he is a 2024 Highly Ranked Scholar by ScholarGPS, ranked lifetime in the following subfields; thanks to the Biometlab team for working together to publish regularly and produce high quality and novel papers that are well received by our peers

Highly Ranked Scholar - Lifetime
#2,028	Overall (All Fields)
#441	Life Sciences
#5	Environmental Sciences
#3	Biosphere
#3	Global change
#4	Forest
#4	Meteorology
#8	Oak
#21	Ecosystem
#675	Energy

Submissions

Climate change has increased global evaporative demand, except in South Asia, PNAS Saeed Karimzadeh, Arman Ahmadi, Dennis Baldocchi, Joshua B. Fisher

The Roads Traveled to Reach a Greenhouse Gas Flux Network, Dennis Baldocchi, Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/26376989

 

Meetings

ddb attended the workshop on Missing Links in Drought Research: Linking Plant Physiology, Soil Hydrology and Climate across Scales, Ascona, Switzerland and give a keynote presentation on How Ecosystem CO2 and H2O Fluxes Respond to Drought: Lessons Learned from a Semi-Arid, Oak Savanna in California

https://www.zhydro.ch/monteverita2025/

Publications

Jiang, P.,  Kidger, P.,  Bandai, T.,  Baldocchi, D.,  Liu, H.,  Xiao, Y., et al. (2025).  JAX-CanVeg: A differentiable land surface model. Water Resources Research,  61, e2024WR038116. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR038116

Visitors

Silvia Caldararu from Trinity University Dublin gave a lab seminar on her research on ecosystem response to phenology, drought and temperature with models and experiments 

Meetings

ddb attended CARB Public Workshop: Natural and Working Lands Carbon Inventory Methods

Kuno Kasak will attend the LICOR Connect 2025 meeting in Tucson, AZ. He will give a presentation on Methane flux dynamics in California oak savanna

 

Submissions

A global network of flux measurements revolutionizes terrestri, al carbon and water cycle research Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, Jingfeng Xiao, D BaldocchiK. Ichii,  Fe Lei, D Papale

 JAX-CanVeg: A Differentiable Land Surface Model" [Paper #2024WR038116R] by Peishi Jian, Patrick Kidger, Toshiyuki Bandai, Dennis Baldocchi, Heping Liu, Yi Xiao, Qianyu Zhang, Carlos Tianxin Wang, Carl Steefel, Xingyuan Chen has been accepted for publication by Water Resources Research

THE ROLE OF HYDROPHYSICAL FACTORS AND SEDIMENT CARBON-NITROGEN COMPOUNDS IN GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS FROM RESTORED CALIFORNIA WETLANDS. Kuno Kasak, PhD Arman Ahmadi, PhD Daphne Szutu Robert Shortt Tianxin Wang, PhD Kyle Delwiche, PhD Eduardo Gamez Ariane Arias Ortiz, PhD Koong Yi, PhD Isaac Okiti Patty Oikawa, PhD Joseph Verfaillie Dennis Baldocchi, PhD. Water Research, submitted

Meetings

ddb attended the AMS annual meeting in New Orleans. He gave an invited talk on Beyond Carbon Fluxes: Extracting Meteorological, Eco-Hydrological, Soil and Plant Information from the Ameriflux/FLUXNET Databases and received the Verner E Suomi Technology Medal

 https://ams.confex.com/ams/105ANNUAL/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/454012

 

Publications

Wang, T., Mallick, Kanishka, Verfaille, Joseph, Szutu, Daphne, Baldocchi, Dennis et al. (2025). "Water scarcity in semi-arid California compromises perennial alfalfa’s high yield and carbon sinking potentials." Agricultural Water Management 308: 109284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2024.109284

 

 

Staff News

ddb received the Suomi Technology Medal at the 2025 annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society.

list of winners

https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-awards-honors/2025-award-and-honors-recipients/

Honors presentation on youtube, with ddb at minute 37..

https://youtu.be/odUXyvRF5Vw