Alemu Gonsamo - School of Earth, Environment & Society

Alemu Gonsamo

Title:

Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Ecosystems

Office:

General Science Building, Rm 303

Phone:

(905) 525-9140 ext. 20148

Fax:

(905) 546-0463

Email:

...

Website:

remotesensing-mcmaster.org

Social Media:

Twitter: @AlemuGonsamo

My research areas are on ground, airborne, and satellite remote sensing of vegetation from the leaf to the globe with special focus on:

plant structural and photosynthetic traits;
land surface and carbon uptake phenology;
terrestrial ecosystem primary productivity and greenness;
global change impact on terrestrial ecosystem productivity; and
terrestrial carbon cycle modelling.

I have done, and am doing, remote sensing of vegetation studies at ecological monitoring sites (e.g., eddy covariance tower networks); on improved product development at regional scale (e.g., leaf area index, primary productivity and land surface phenology); and on global change impact assessment on terrestrial ecosystem productivity at regional (e.g., circumpolar land surface phenology and atmospheric CO2 seasonality) and global scales. Besides remote sensing data, I use ground measurements of plant biophysical variables, photosynthetic traits, atmospheric CO2 concentration, eddy covariance CO2 fluxes and plant phenology; gridded climate data records; terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle models; and Earth System Model (ESM) outputs.

Research Interests:

Remote Sensing of Vegetation, Phenology, Global Change Ecology, Terrestrial Carbon Cycle, Climate Change Impact

EARTHSC/ENVIR SE/GEOG 3SR3: Remote Sensing, (Term Two) 2019-20

CBC, Jully 2018
EOS Earth & Space Science News, August 2017
Nature Climate Change, September 2016
Linkedin Pulse, May 2016
Nature, October 2014
OIKOS, June 2013

* Please visit Google Scholar for full publication list

Gonsamo A., J.M. Chen & Y. W. Ooi (2018). Peak season plant activity shift towards spring is reflected by increasing carbon uptake by extra-tropical ecosystems. Global Change Biology, 24, 2117-2128.

Gonsamo A., J.-M. Walter, J.M. Chen, P. Pellikka & P. Schleppi (2018). A robust leaf area index algorithm accounting for the expected errors in gap fraction observations. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 248, 197-204.

Gonsamo A., P. D’Odorico, J. M. Chen, C. Wu & N. Buchmann (2017). Changes in vegetation phenology are not reflected in atmospheric CO2 and13C/12C seasonality. Global Change Biology, 13, 4029-4044.

Gonsamo A., J.M. Chen, S.T.Colombo, M.T. Ter-Mikaelian & J. Chen (2017). Global change induced biomass growth offsets carbon releases through increased forest fire and respiration of the central Canadian boreal forest. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, 112, 1275–1293.

Gonsamo A. & J.M. Chen (2016). Circumpolar vegetation dynamics product for global change study. Remote Sensing of Environment, 182, 13–26.

Gonsamo A., J.M. Chen & D. Lambardozzi (2016). Global vegetation productivity response to climatic oscillations during the satellite era. Global Change Biology, 22, 3414–3426.

Gonsamo A., J.M. Chen, D.T. Shindell & G.P. Asner (2016).Coherence among the Northern Hemisphere land, cryosphere, and ocean responses to natural variability and anthropogenic forcing during the satellite era. Earth System Dynamics, 7, 717-734.

Gonsamo A. & J.M. Chen (2015). Winter teleconnections can predict the ensuing summer European crop productivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, E2265–E2266.

Gonsamo, A., and J.M. Chen (2014). Improved LAI algorithm implementation to MODIS data by incorporating background, topography and foliage clumping information. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 52, 1076 - 1088.

Gonsamo A., J.M. Chen, C. Boisvenue, W.A. Kurz, D.T. Price, C. Wu, R.A. Hember & K.H. Chang (2013). Improved assessment of gross and net primary productivity of Canada’s landmass. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, 118, 1546–1560.

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