Professor Stephen Sitch
Stephen is a Professor and Chair in Climate Change at the University of Exeter (UNEXE). He leads the international land carbon model project (TRENDY), which contributes annually to the Global Carbon Budget. He has led NERC- and Newton-funded research on tropical forest function and the carbon cycle. He also holds ESA funding to use remote sensing data for regional carbon assessments and the global stocktake, and currently leads an ESA grant on extreme fires. He is the Principal Investigator on Amazon-SOS and Work Package 3 (Integrating empirical understanding, remote-sensing and modelling).
Professor Lina Mercado
Lina has been with the UNEXE since June 2011 holds a 30% subcontract with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) in Wallingford, UK, where she previously worked as a land surface modeller. She maintains a close collaboration with the multidisciplinary JULES modelling team at CEH, which specialises in hydrological modelling, land-atmosphere interactions, and ecological processes. Lina will co-lead with Peter Cox the JULES modelling in Amazon-SOS focusing on ecophysiology in JULES and Plant Functional Types (PFTs) in JULES-RED.
Professor Lucy Rowland
Lucy is an expert in tropical forest responses to environmental stress, with a focus on water stress, hydraulics, and gas exchange, and integrates field data into vegetation models. As a Professor at the University of Exeter, she leads a research group dedicated to making detailed measurements of plant characteristics related to the carbon and water cycles in tropical ecosystems. Her work aims to understand how these cycles interact and are influenced by changing environmental conditions. Lucy will lead work on trait-based PFTs and guide modelling of plant drought-stress in JULES, and empirical drought measurements in Amazon-SOS.
Professor Peter Cox
Peter is a Professor of Climate System Dynamics in Mathematics and the Director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter. He previously worked at the Met Office-Hadley Centre (1990-2004) and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (2004-2006). Peter is an international leader in understanding the interactions between the land biosphere and climate change. He led the development of the first coupled Earth System Model (ESM) to highlight the potential risk of climate-driven dieback in the Amazon rainforest (Cox et al., 2004). Peter will co-lead the RED modelling in Amazon-SOS.
Professor Ted Feldpausch
Ted’s research and teaching span global forests and savannas, with a focus on the tropics, especially Latin America, where he has lived and worked for more than 20 years. His research aims to understand the drivers of vegetation dynamics and structure, the effect of changing climate on carbon and nutrient cycling, and how disturbance and forest degradation, including natural processes and anthropogenic conversion, affect long-term vegetation function. Ted will lead forest plot monitoring in Human-Modified Forests (HMF) in Mato Grosso and Amazonas states in Brazil, and in Peru.
Dr Thais Rosan
Thais is a geographer and environmental scientist with a particular interest in remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and the carbon cycle in tropical ecosystems. Her research is focused on elucidating the impact of human activities, including land use change, landscape fragmentation, and fire, on the carbon cycle and broader ecological processes in tropical ecosystems. Thais will guide work on the application of Earth Observation data in Amazon-SOS (e.g. use of European Space Agency data).