Publications
Lab members in bold · * corresponding author · † co-first author. For the most up-to-date list, see Google Scholar.
2026
- Optimizing carbon dioxide removal in agricultural soils: A new mechanistic model of enhanced rock weathering Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (accepted) COUSINE couples soil organic and inorganic carbon to quantify CO₂ removal by enhanced rock weathering. Validated against a field trial in the US Corn Belt, it shows how clay and organic acids, nitrogen fertiliser and climate limit how much CO₂ is removed in situ, and how fast.
- Biogeochemistry-Informed Neural Network (BINN v1.0) for improving accuracy of model prediction and scientific understanding of soil organic carbon storage Geoscientific Model Development 19(14), 6777–6795 An end-to-end deep learning framework that maps environmental covariates to the parameters of a process-based model, enabling efficient multi-objective optimization with causal-inference capacity. In the news: Cornell Chronicle
- Scientifically-Interpretable Reasoning Network (ScIReN): Discovering hidden relationships in the carbon cycle and beyond Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 40(45), 38441–38450 Uses Kolmogorov–Arnold networks to reveal interpretable relationships between environmental features and process-model parameters — turning deep learning from a black box into a transparent one.
- Elevated CO₂ mitigated warming-enhanced carbon loss from northern peatland Science Advances 12(44), eaek1491
- Limited energy for microorganisms constrains carbon accrual in soil Nature Geoscience 19(9), 1064–1071 Global evidence that energy limits soil microbial metabolism, restricting microbial growth and ultimately soil carbon accrual.
- Global hotspots of particulate organic carbon losses under climate change Nature Communications 17, 4695
- Productivity-driven decoupling of microbial carbon use efficiency and respiration across global soils Science Advances 12(3), eadz5319
- Climate change leads to significant loss of soil inorganic carbon National Science Review 13(5), nwag075
- Scaling up enhanced rock weathering for equitable climate change mitigation Communications Sustainability 1, 32
- Net primary productivity orchestrates uncertainty sources driving global soil organic carbon under land use change Communications Earth & Environment 7, 285
- Advancing ecosystem ecology through innovative research methods and techniques Frontiers of Earth Science 20(1), 1–20
2025
- Large CO₂ removal potential of woody debris preservation in managed forests Nature Geoscience 18(7), 675–681 A theoretical test of burying wood in soils as a scalable carbon dioxide removal method. In the news: Science Blog · Phys.org · Cornell Chronicle
2024
- Convergence in simulating global soil organic carbon by structurally different models after data assimilation Global Change Biology 30(5), e17297
- Size, distribution, and vulnerability of the global soil inorganic carbon Science 384, 233–239 A global assessment of soil inorganic carbon storage and its vulnerability to climate change. In the news: Phys.org · The Conversation · People's Daily
- Emerging multiscale insights on microbial carbon use efficiency in the land carbon cycle Nature Communications 15, 8010
- Observational benchmarks inform representation of soil organic carbon dynamics in land surface models Biogeosciences 21(22), 5173–5183
- Reply to: Beyond microbial carbon use efficiency National Science Review 11(4), nwae058
- Reply to: Model uncertainty obscures major driver of soil carbon Nature 627, E4–E6
- Inorganic and organic synergies in enhanced weathering to promote carbon dioxide removal Global Change Biology 30, e17132
2023
- Microbial carbon use efficiency promotes global soil carbon storage Nature 618, 981–985 The first global-scale measure of the relative importance of microbial processes in the soil carbon cycle — microbial carbon use efficiency matters at least four times more than any other process, including decomposition and plant input. ★ Best Student Paper, Sino-Ecologists Association Overseas (Sino-Eco) 2023 In the news: Phys.org · Technology Networks · Cornell Chronicle · VBiO (German) · Forskning.se (Swedish) · Tsinghua News (Chinese)
- Matrix approach to accelerate spin-up of CLM5 Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 15(8), e2023MS003625
- Thermal acclimation of plant photosynthesis and autotrophic respiration in a northern peatland Environmental Research: Climate 2(2), 025003
- Across-model spread and shrinking in predicting peatland carbon dynamics under global change Global Change Biology 29, 2759–2775
2022
- Microbe–iron interactions control lignin decomposition in soil Soil Biology and Biochemistry 173, 108803
- Matrix approach to land carbon cycle modeling Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 14(7), e2022MS003008
- PROcess-guided deep learning and DAta-driven modelling (PRODA) Book chapter in Luo, Y. & Smith, B. (Eds.), Land Carbon Cycle Modeling: Matrix Approach, Data Assimilation, and Ecological Forecasting. Taylor & Francis
- Bayesian statistics and Markov chain Monte Carlo method in data assimilation Book chapter in Luo, Y. & Smith, B. (Eds.), Land Carbon Cycle Modeling: Matrix Approach, Data Assimilation, and Ecological Forecasting. Taylor & Francis
- Practice 10: Deep learning to optimize parametrization of CLM5 Book chapter in Luo, Y. & Smith, B. (Eds.), Land Carbon Cycle Modeling: Matrix Approach, Data Assimilation, and Ecological Forecasting. Taylor & Francis
2021
- Global consistency in response of terrestrial ecosystem respiration to temperature Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 308–309, 108576
2020
- Deep learning optimizes data-driven representation of soil organic carbon in Earth system model over the conterminous United States Frontiers in Big Data 3, 17 One of the first studies to fuse deep learning with a process-based model to understand the soil carbon cycle.
2019
- Priming effects of soil organic matter decomposition with addition of different carbon substrates Journal of Soils and Sediments 19, 1171–1178
2018
- A temperature threshold to identify the driving climate forces of the respiratory process in terrestrial ecosystems European Journal of Soil Biology 89, 1–8