Research
My research is more generally in the interactions of radiation (predominantly at optical wavelengths) with the land surface. In particular I am interested in how radiation interacts with vegetation, how we can model and understand this interaction and how we can exploit it to quantify and understand the terrestrial biosphere, particular relate to the carbon cycle - how plants take up and release carbon, naturally, in response to changing climate and under an increasing range of anthropogenic disturbances (eg fire, land use change, agriculture, deforestation and degradation etc). Satellites allow us large-scale but very indirect observations of surface biophysical properties, particularly the extent and dynamics of vegetation. Much of my research effort has been directed at new ways of exploiting observations of this sort to provide quantitative estimates of these things that are consistent with our understanding of climate carbon cycle models and observations. The image below sums up our aims - this shows an area of temperate rainforest on Fraser Island, Northern Queensland, Australia. The variety of structure (shadows, texture) and variations in leaf colour (to do with chlorophyll and water content) is very striking. My aim is to understand and exploit this 'signal' much better than we can do currently, for all sorts of applications that rely on knowing the state of forests like this.