Publications
Showing 21 results for Author: Daryl Yang
Sep, 2026
Journal
Ecological Insights from Transferable Plant Biomass Mapping across the Arctic using High-resolution Structure-from-Motion and LiDAR Data
Warmer temperatures, permafrost thaw, and increased wildfire activity are driving rapid ecological change across the Arctic, significantly altering plant productivity and aboveground biomass (AGB). These rapid changes highlight the urgent need to improve monitoring of vegetation dynamics in the Earth’s northern ecosystems, where high spatiotemporal heterogeneity occurs at…
Apr, 2026
Journal
Meta-analysis of North American Arctic and boreal aboveground biomass datasets: assessing accuracy, dynamics, and similarities
The North American arctic and boreal regions (ABRs) are rapidly warming and experiencing intensifying disturbances. Accurately quantifying aboveground biomass (AGB) is critical for understanding the impacts of these changes on the carbon cycle and for designing climate change mitigation strategies. Several AGB maps have been developed for the North American ABRs, including…
Feb, 2026
Journal
The Global Spectra-Trait Initiative: A database of paired leaf spectroscopy and functional traits associated with leaf photosynthetic capacity
Accurate assessment of leaf functional traits is crucial for a diverse range of applications from crop phenotyping to parameterizing global climate models. Leaf reflectance spectroscopy offers a promising avenue to advance ecological and agricultural research by complementing traditional, time-consuming gas exchange measurements. However, the development of robust hyperspe…
Feb, 2026
Journal
Integrating very-high-resolution imagery, Sentinel-2 time-series data, and machine learning to map shrub fractional abundance across arid and semi-arid ecosystems in China
Shrub fractional abundance (SFA), the proportion of shrub cover per unit area, serves as a critical indicator of environmental aridity and ecosystem health in arid and semi-arid regions, particularly across the Mongolian steppe. However, large-scale SFA mapping in Mongolian steppe ecosystems remains challenging due to the small crown size of shrubs, their sparse distributi…
Jan, 2026
Journal
Topography and functional traits shape the distribution of key shrub plant functional types in low-Arctic tundra
The expansion of shrubs in the Arctic tundra fundamentally modifies land-atmosphere interactions. However, it remains unclear how shrub distribution and expansion differ across key species due to challenges with discriminating tundra plant species at regional scales. Here, we combined multi-scale, multi-platform remote sensing and in situ trait measurements to elucidate th…
Dec, 2025
Journal
Improving leaf spring phenology modelling for temperate tree species: An integration of the Farquhar–Medlyn photosynthesis model with the optimality-based approach
1. Spring leaf phenology in temperate tree species is highly sensitive to climate change and significantly affects plant photosynthetic performance, resource utilization, competition and trophic interactions, thereby impacting various ecosystem functions. Although optimality-based (OPT) approaches for modelling spring phenology are increasingly recognized, the optimal repr…
Dec, 2025
Journal
Integrating Characteristic Arctic Vegetation in a Land Surface Model Improves Representation of Carbon Dynamics Across a Tundra Landscape
Arctic warming is altering vegetation and carbon dynamics with global implications, yet Earth System Model (ESM) predictions in the Arctic remain highly uncertain, in part due to historically limited data for model parameterization and validation. As such, ESMs typically represent Arctic ecosystems in an oversimplified manner. Recently, nine plant functional types (PFTs) d…
Dec, 2025
Journal
Fine-scale landscape characteristics, vegetation composition, and snowmelt timing control phenological heterogeneity across low-Arctic tundra landscapes in Western Alaska
The Arctic is warming at over twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, resulting in significant changes in vegetation seasonality that regulates annual carbon, water, and energy fluxes. However, a crucial knowledge gap exists regarding the intricate interplay among climate, permafrost, and vegetation that generates high phenology variability across extensive tundra landsca…
Oct, 2025
Journal
Fine-scale Vegetation Composition and Structure Shape Spatiotemporal Variation in Surface Albedo across a Low Arctic Tundra Landscape
The unprecedented rate of warming in the Arctic is driving changes in the structure and composition of tundra vegetation. Increases in deciduous tall shrub cover, height, and density are of particular concern, as these changes alter local surface albedo in ways that could amplify effects on the regional surface energy budget (SEB). Despite this importance, significant unce…