Wisconsin Discovery Portal

Researcher's Profile

Last Name

Desai 

First Name

Ankur 

Middle Initial

Areas of Research Expertise

* Climate change
* Regional carbon cycle
* Boundary layer and mesoscale meteorology
* Biogeochemistry
* Turbulence
* Ecosystem-atmosphere observations
* Ecosystem models and data assimilation

Web site

Ankur Desai's Home Page 

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Ankur Desai's CV 

Current/Active Funding

 

Issued Patent(s)

 

USPTO Published Applications

Recent Publication(s)

  • "Global estimates of evapotranspiration and gross primary production based on MODIS and global meteorology data"

Remote Sensing of Environment 114(7): 1416-1431 July 2010.  The global estimates of ET and GPP agreed well with the other global models from the literature, with the highest ET and GPP over tropical forests and the lowest values in dry and high latitude areas. 

  • "Albedo estimates for land surface models and support for a new paradigm based on foliage nitrogen concentration"

Hollinger DY, Ollinger SV, Richardson AD, et al., Global Change Biology 16 (2): 696-710 Feb 2010. Vegetation albedo is a critical component of the Earth's climate system, yet efforts to evaluate and improve albedo parameterizations in climate models have lagged relative to other aspects of model development. Here, we calculated growing season albedos for deciduous and evergreen forests, crops, and grasslands based on over 40 site-years of data from the AmeriFlux network and compared them with estimates presently used in the land surface formulations of a variety of climate models.

  • "Contrasting carbon dioxide fluxes between a drying shrub wetland in Northern Wisconsin, USA, and nearby forests"

Sulman BN, Desai AR, Cook BD. Biogeosciences 6(6): 1115-1126 2009.Wetland biogeochemistry is strongly influenced by water and temperature dynamics, and these interactions are currently poorly represented in ecosystem and climate models. A decline in water table of approximately 30 cm was observed at a wetland in Northern Wisconsin, USA over a period from 2001-2007, which was highly correlated with an increase in daily soil temperature variability.

  • "Cross-site evaluation of eddy covariance GPP and RE decomposition techniques"

Desai AR, Richardson AD, Moffat AM, et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148 (6-7) 821-838 Jun 2008. For the flux of carbon dioxide, this net ecosystem exchange (NEE) is governed by two processes, gross primary production (GPP) and a sum of autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration components known as ecosystem respiration (RE). A number of statistical flux-partitioning methods, often developed to fill missing NEE data, can also be used to estimate GPP and RE from NEE time series. Here we present results of the first comprehensive, multi-site comparison of these partitioning methods.

  • "Influence of vegetation and seasonal forcing on carbon dioxide fluxes across the Upper Midwest, USA: Implications for regional scaling"

Desai AR, Noormets A, Bolstad PV, et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148 (2): 288-308 Feb 2008. These results provide insight on the range of spatial sampling, replication, measurement error and land cover accuracy needed for multi-tiered bottom-up scaling of CO2 fluxes in heterogeneous regions such as the Upper Midwest, USA.

Recent Artistic Works

 

Collaboration

  • Pennsylvania State University
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • SUNY-Buffalo
  • Michigan Tech
  • University of Virginia

Research Tools

  • Eddy covariance
  • High precision trace gas observation and inversion
  • Ecosystem modeling
  • Ecological data assimilation
  • Mesoscale modeling

Research Facilities

  • Desai CO2/CH4 calibration lab
  • Chequamegon Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study fieldsites
  • WLEF tall tower EOS validation site

E-mail Address

desai@aos.wisc.edu 

Phone Number

(608) 265-9201 

Current University

UW- Madison 

Department

Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences / Environmental Studies 

Title

Assistant Professor 

Other Appointments

 

Address Line 1

1549 Atmospheric Oceanic and Space Sciences Building 

Address Line 2

1225 West Dayton Street 

City

Madison 

State

WI 

Zip Code

53706 

Bachelor's Degree

BA, Oberlin College, Environmental Studies and Computer Science, 1997

Master's Degree

MA, University of Minnesota, Geography, 2000

PhD

PhD, Pennsylvania State University, Meteorology, 2006

Other Degrees

 

Technologies Available for Licensing

Attachments
Created at 6/12/2007 2:07 PM  by Mindy Dawson 
Last modified at 6/8/2010 2:30 PM  by EXTWEB\alarson