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2017 Year in Review

· 4 min read
Mike Dietze
Mike Dietze
PEcAn Project PI

A roundup of PEcAn project activities and highlights from 2017.

This was a year of visible community engagement, from AGU and ESA events to training activities, student projects, and continued development of forecasting and data-assimilation workflows.

Major Events​

PEcAn AGU Workshop (December 2017)​

The PEcAn project held a two-part event at the 2017 AGU Fall meeting on Tuesday December 12th, 2017 from 4-7pm. The meeting included an open demonstration (4:00-5:30) followed by a focused science team collaborator meeting (5:30-7:00).

The event was held at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Third Floor - Parish Room.

The demonstration entailed a general overview of the project and breakout groups in which members of the PEcAn team led hands-on tutorials and took questions. The Science Team meeting focused on high-level development goals and user needs for the coming year.

PEcAn Team at AGU 2017 (December 11-15)​

The PEcAn Team presented multiple talks and posters at the 2017 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Conference:

Tuesday:

  • Istem Fer: "Paleoclimate reconstruction through Bayesian data assimilation" (ORAL PP21D-06, 9:15 Room 343)
  • Cristine Rollinson: "Impacts of weather versus climate and driver uncertainty on multi-centennial ecosystem model simulations" (ORAL Poster Hall D-F, 10:35 Room 343)
  • Ann Raiho: "Estimating the ecology of extinct species with paleoecological data assimilation" (ORAL PP22A-05, 11:20 Room 343)
  • Alexey Shiklomanov: "Leaf optical properties shed light on foliar trait variability at individual to global scales" (ORAL B22C-07, 11:50 Room 383-385)

Wednesday:

  • Rob Kooper: "Data Flow for the TERRA-REF project" (POSTER IN31A-0063, 8:00 Poster Hall D-F)
  • Michael Dietze: "Integration of Ecosystem Research Infrastructures for Multiscale Analysis II" (PANEL B31H-04, 8-10 am Rooms 383-385)
  • Eugenie Euskirchen: "Predicting Changes in Arctic Tundra Vegetation: Towards an Understanding of Plant Trait Uncertainty" (Poster B31A-1979, 08:00-12:20 Poster Hall D-F)

Thursday:

  • David LeBauer: "TERRA REF: Advancing phenomics with high resolution, open access sensor and genomics data" (ORAL, 10:40 Room 383-385)
  • Tony Gardella: "A multi-model assessment of terrestrial biosphere model data needs" (ORAL, 2:25 Room 356-357)

Friday:

  • Anne Thomas: "Assessing Ecosystem Model Performance in Semiarid Systems" (Poster B51G-1893, 8am Poster Hall D-F)
  • Molly Aufforth: "Constraining Agricultural Irrigation Surface Energy Budget Feedbacks in Atmospheric Models" (Poster B53B-1953, 1:40 pm Poster Hall D-F)
  • Betsy Cowdery: "Looking Past Primary Productivity: Benchmarking System Processes that Drive Ecosystem Level Responses in Models" (ORAL H54D-01, 4 pm Room 298-299)
  • Shawn Serbin: "Evaluation of Multiple Mechanistic Hypotheses of Leaf Photosynthesis and Stomatal Conductance against Diurnal and Seasonal Data from Two Contrasting Panamanian Tropical Forests" (ORAL H54D-05, 5 pm Room 298-299)
  • Tess McCabe: "Integrating invasive grasses into carbon cycle projections: Cogongrass spread in southern pine forests" (ORAL B54B-07, 5:30 pm Room 388-390)

Conferences and Meetings​

FIA Annual Meeting (October 2017)​

Istem attended the FIA Stakeholder Science Meeting in Park City, Utah, presenting work on assimilating demographical data into models and validating models against FIA data.

GSOC Mentor Summit (October 2017)​

Alexey and Betsy attended the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit as a result of our project's successful participation in the GSoC Program.

COST-PROFOUND Final Conference (October 2017)​

Mike Dietze attended and presented at the 2017 Cost-Profound FP1304 Final Meeting. His presentation was about his "PROFOUND thoughts on Model-Data Integration & Forecasting".

PEcAn at ESA 2017 (August 2017)​

Many PEcAn and Dietze Lab members attended and presented at the Ecological Society of America's conference in Portland, Oregon.

PEcAn at Flux Course 2017 (July 2017)​

Mike Dietze, Ankur Desai, Betsy Cowdery, and James Simkins returned to teach at the Flux Course.

Summer Developers (May 2017)​

Shubham Agarwal​

Shubham graduated with an Integrated M.Tech in Mathematics and Computing'15 from IIT Delhi. He then worked as a Data Scientist for a year (2015-16) at TrulyMadly Matchmakers Pvt. Ltd. Shubham was enrolled in the one-year Masters (MSIAM) Data Science specialization program offered jointly by Université Grenoble Alpes and Grenoble INP, Grenoble, France, and worked on our GSoC project 'Scientific Workflows'.

Other Events​

PROFOUND Summer Course 2017​

The team participated in the PROFOUND Summer Course.

PEcAn Team at AAG​

Team members presented at the American Association of Geographers meeting.

PEcAn at NACP 2017​

The project had a presence at the North American Carbon Program meeting.

DIBBS NSF Meeting​

Team members participated in the DIBBS NSF meeting.