Group News:

🎉 Apr 2025: Dien’s first PI proposal via CSU to NASA’s TEMPO mission was selected!! 🛰️ This project focuses on soil NOx emissions from agricultural land. Our wonderful team includes Stephen Ogle, Ram Gurung, and Anping Chen.

Jan 2025: Dien started her assistant professorship at the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

Research Theme:

The overarching goal is to investigate human impacts on carbon, pollution, water, and energy fluxes using observations as key constraints! In our rapidly changing climate, our generation faces key challenges related to the carbon and water/energy cycles: mitigating anthropogenic and pyrogenic emissions while enhancing carbon sequestration and ensuring food security while coping with water scarcity.

Check out specific research questions over climate-sensitive ecosystems:
🌆 🌳 Urban Carbon (fossil fuel combustions, vegetation): How much fossil fuel CO2 do cities emit? Do some emit more and why? How much CO2 does urban vegetation uptake? How would urban land use change alter CO2 sequestration?
🚗 Bridging Carbon to Air pollutants: Do heavy industries burn less efficiently? Can emission mitigation be verified and detected from space?

💧 🌾 Agricultural Land (water usage, soil emissions): How much irrigation water do crop trees in the Central Valley consume?

🔥 Vegetation Fires (wildland & urban fires, prescribed burns): How much pyrogenic CO is produced over the western North America? Do estimates from bottom-up models agree with those with constraints of atmospheric observations?