Research

biogeography

  • What is the potential distribution of introduced/invasive species?
  • How will climate change impact endangered species?
  • Do sister species have similar ecological niches and geographic ranges?
  • How does human impact species geographic ranges?




species' distribution in the geographic space

ecological niche in the environmental space

biodiversity informatics

  • How to effectively control the quality of biodiversity data?
  • How to synthesize the big-data of biodiversity?
  • How to produce robust range maps for all plants on Earth?




BIENdata.org, a biodiversity database for plant geographic distributions, functional traits, and range maps

methodology of ecological niche modeling/species distribution modeling

  • How does novel environmental conditions affect model transferability?
  • What is the effect of collinearity shift on model transfer?
  • How to improve the reproducibility of ecological models?
  • How to incorporate physiology in improving model accuracy during model extrapolation?



↗ overestimation of the ecological niche

ecoclimate teleconnection

  • How does forest die-off impact the ecology and economics in remote areas?
  • What is the structure and strength of ecoclimate teleconnection?
  • What are the implications for land management given the network of teleconnections?


↗ networks of tele-connected NEON regions

(Lopez-Hoffman & Feng et al. in prep)

↗ example of ecoclimate teleconnection: forest die-off in one NEON region (Pacific Southwest) impacts crop production in another NEON region (Prairie Peninsula)