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Jinxun Liu

Dr. Jinxun Liu is a Research Ecologist with the Western Geographic Science Center at Moffett Field, CA. His research interests and expertise are closely related to system ecology and ecosystem simulation models.

Jinxun began agro-forestry system modelling and performed system optimization on tree harvesting during his PhD study. Starting in the late 1990s, he began carbon simulation studies. He has used many models in his research, such as the CBM-CFS2, 3PG, TreeDYN3, CENTURY, TRIPLEX, IBIS, GEMS-EDCM, USPED, and LUCAS. His other skills include GIS/RS data processing, NetCDF data processing/visualization, artificial neural network modeling, and leadership class supper computing (ALCF Mira/Theta, NERSC Cori/Perlmutter). His research activities have resulted in more than 60 peer-reviewed journal publications.

Professional Experience

  • 2015–Current: Research Ecologist, USGS Western Geographic Science Center

  • 2013–2015: Research Associate, San Jose State University Research Foundation

  • 2008–2013: Senior Scientist, Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT Inc.

  • 2005–2008: Senior Scientist, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

  • 2003–2005: Senior Research Associate, U.S. National Research Council, USGS EROS

  • 2001–2003: Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Geography, University of Toronto

  • 1999–2001: Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Natural Resources Management, Lakehead University

  • 1995–1999: Associate Researcher, Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN Secretariat)

  • 1985–1988: Assistant Engineer, Integrated Survey of Forest Resources, Heilongjiang, China

Education and Certifications

  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China, Ecology, 1991-1994, Ph.D. 

  • Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China, Agricultural ecology, 1988-1991, M.Sc.

  • Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China, Forestry, 1980-1984, B.Sc.

Science and Products

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LUCAS model

Wetland Carbon Working Group: Improving Methodologies and Estimates of Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Flux in Wetlands

WARC researchers are working to quantify the impacts of future climate and land use/land cover change on greenhouse gas emissions and reductions.
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Land Management Research Program, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center , Gulf of Mexico
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Wetland Carbon Working Group: Improving Methodologies and Estimates of Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Flux in Wetlands

WARC researchers are working to quantify the impacts of future climate and land use/land cover change on greenhouse gas emissions and reductions.
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Image of Mount Adams with grassland and trees

Land Use and Climate Change Team

We are a research team focusing on understanding the rates, causes, and consequences of land change across a range of geographic and temporal scales. Our emphasis is on developing alternative future projections and quantifying the impact on environmental systems, in particular, the role of land-use change on ecosystem carbon dynamics. We are interested in how land-use and climate systems will...
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Western Geographic Science Center
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Land Use and Climate Change Team

We are a research team focusing on understanding the rates, causes, and consequences of land change across a range of geographic and temporal scales. Our emphasis is on developing alternative future projections and quantifying the impact on environmental systems, in particular, the role of land-use change on ecosystem carbon dynamics. We are interested in how land-use and climate systems will...
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Data Release - CONUS carbon budget related to Global Change Biology publication

This simulated ecosystem carbon dataset is used to report terrestrial carbon budget of the conterminous U.S. in the Golobal Change Biology paper "Critical land change information enhances understanding of carbon balance in the U.S." The data is derived from simulations of the parallel Integrated Biosphere simulator (pIBIS). Annual carbon variables cover 1971-2015 at 1-km (960m) spatial resolution
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Western Geographic Science Center

Federal Lands Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sequestration in the United States: Estimates 2005-14 - Data Release

This dataset includes ten years of emissions and sequestration estimates (2005-2014) in two separate tables, 1) the combustion and extraction of fossil fuels on Federal lands and 2) processes from the ecosystems on those Federal lands. The fossil fuel related estimates include the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), and the ecosystems estimates include on
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Energy Resources Program, Geology, Energy & Minerals Science Center

Simulated 1km resolution 1971-2015 ecosystem carbon variables from the IBIS model (2017/09/12)

This simulated ecosystem carbon dataset is derived from simulations of the parallel Integrated Biosphere simulator (pIBIS). Annual carbon variables cover 1971-2015 at 1-km (960m) spatial resolution with 3052 rows and 4823 columns. Carbon stock and flux units are in kgC/m2 and kgC/m2/yr, respectively. Data are in NetCDF format and Albers equal area projection. Overall data creation steps: 1. The pI
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Western Geographic Science Center

Federal lands greenhouse emissions and sequestration in the United States—Estimates for 2005–14

In January 2016, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior tasked the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) with producing a publicly available and annually updated database of estimated greenhouse gas emissions associated with the extraction and use (predominantly some form of combustion) of fossil fuels from Federal lands. In response, the USGS has produced estimates of the greenhouse gas emi

Authors
Matthew D. Merrill, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Philip A. Freeman, Jinxun Liu, Peter D. Warwick, Bradley C. Reed
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Energy Resources Program, Geology, Energy & Minerals Science Center
Filter Total Items: 44

An early warning signal for grassland degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Intense grazing may lead to grassland degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, but it is difficult to predict where this will occur and to quantify it. Based on a process-based ecosystem model, we define a productivity-based stocking rate threshold that induces extreme grassland degradation to assess whether and where the current grazing activity in the region is sustainable. We find that the c
Authors
Qiuan Zhu, Huai Chen, Changhui Peng, Jinxun Liu, Shilong Piao, Jin-Sheng He, Shiping Wang, Xinquan Zhao, Jiang Zhang, Xiuqin Fang, Jiaxin Jin, Qi-En Yang, Liliang Ren, Yanfen Wang
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Western Geographic Science Center

Upscaling wetland methane emissions from the FLUXNET-CH4 Eddy Covariance Network (UpCH4 v1.0): Model development, network assessment, and budget comparison

Wetlands are responsible for 20%–31% of global methane (CH4) emissions and account for a large source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget. Data-driven upscaling of CH4 fluxes from eddy covariance measurements can provide new and independent bottom-up estimates of wetland CH4 emissions. Here, we develop a six-predictor random forest upscaling model (UpCH4), trained on 119 site-years of eddy cov
Authors
Gavin McNicol, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Zutao Ouyang, Sarah Knox, Zhang Zhen, Tuula Aalto, Sheel Bansal, Kuang-Yu Chang, Min Chen, Kyle Delwiche, Sarah Feron, Mathias Goeckede, Jinxun Liu, Avni Malhotra, Joe R. Melton, William Riley, Rodrigo Vargas, Kunxiaojia Yuan, Qing Yang, Qing Zhu, Pavel Alekseychik, Mika Aurela, David P. Billesbach, David I. Campbell, Jiquan Chen, Housen Chu, Ankur Desai, Eugenie Euskirchen, Jordan Goodrich, Timothy Griffis, Manuel Helbig, Takashi Hirano, Hiroki Iwata, Gerald Jurasinski, John King, Franziska Koebsch, Randall Kolka, Ken Krauss, Annalea Lohila, Ivan Mammarella, Mats Nilson, Asko Noormets, Walter Oechel, Matthias Peichl, Torsten Sachs, Ayaka Sakabe, Christopher Schulze, Oliver Sonnentag, Ryan C. Sullivan, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, Masahito Ueyama, Timo Vesala, Eric Ward, Christian Wille, Guan Xhuan Wong, Donatella Zona, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Benjamin Poulter, Robert B. Jackson
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Western Geographic Science Center

Active forest management accelerates carbon storage in plantation forests in Lishui, southern China

BackgroundChina has committed to achieving peak CO2 emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060; therefore, accelerated efforts are needed to better understand carbon accounting in industry and energy fields as well as terrestrial ecosystems. The carbon sink capacity of plantation forests contributes to the mitigation of climate change. Plantation forests throughout the world are inten
Authors
Jiaojiao Diao, Jinxun Liu, Zhiliang Zhu, Xinyuan Wei, Mingshi Li
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Western Geographic Science Center

Terrestrial ecosystem modeling with IBIS: Progress and future vision

Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVM) are powerful tools for studying complicated ecosystem processes and global changes. This review article synthesizes the developments and applications of the Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS), a DGVM, over the past two decades. IBIS has been used to evaluate carbon, nitrogen, and water cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, vegetation changes, land-atmosphere
Authors
Jinxun Liu, Xuehe Lu, Qiuan Zhu, Wenping Yuan, Quanzhi Yuan, Zhen Zhang, Qingxi Guo, Carol Deering
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Western Geographic Science Center

Ecosystem carbon balance in the Hawaiian Islands under different scenarios of future climate and land use change

The State of Hawai'i passed legislation to be carbon neutral by 2045, a goal that will partly depend on carbon sequestration by terrestrial ecosystems. However, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the future direction and magnitude of the land carbon sink in the Hawaiian Islands. We used the Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS), a spatially explicit stochastic simulation model
Authors
Paul Selmants, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Jinxun Liu, Tamara S. Wilson, Clay Trauernicht, Abby G. Frazier, Gregory P. Asner
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Western Geographic Science Center

Modeling watershed carbon dynamics as affected by land cover change and soil erosion

Process-based ecosystem carbon cycle models typically incorporate vegetation growth, vegetation mortality, and soil respiration as well as the biotic and environmental drivers that influence these variables. However, few spatially explicit process models can efficiently incorporate the influence of land cover change and carbon lateral movement at regional scales or high spatial resolution. This st
Authors
Jinxun Liu, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Paul Selmants, Jiaojiao Diao, Qiang Zhou, Bruce Worstell, Monica Mei Jeen Moritsch
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National Land Imaging Program, Western Geographic Science Center, Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection

Identifying dominant environmental predictors of freshwater wetland methane fluxes across diurnal to seasonal time scales

While wetlands are the largest natural source of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere, they represent a large source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget due to the complex biogeochemical controls on CH4 dynamics. Here we present, to our knowledge, the first multi-site synthesis of how predictors of CH4 fluxes (FCH4) in freshwater wetlands vary across wetland types at diel, multiday (synoptic), and
Authors
Sarah Knox, Sheel Bansal, Gavin McNicol, Karina Schafer, Cove Sturtevant, Masahito Ueyama, Alex Valach, Denis Baldocchi, Kyle B. Delwiche, Ankur R. Desai, Eugenie S. Euskirchen, Jinxun Liu, Annalea Lohila, Avni Malhotra, Lulie Melling, William Riley, Benjamin R. K. Runkle, Jessica Turner, Rodrigo Vargas, Qing Zhu, Tuula Alto, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Mathias Goeckede, Joe Melton, Oliver Sonnentag, Timo Vesala, Eric Ward, Zhen Zhang, Sarah Feron, Zutao Ouyang, Angela C I Tang, Pavel Alekseychik, Mika Aurela, Gil Bohrer, David I. Campbell, Jiquan Chen, Housen Chu, Higo Dalmagro, Jordan P. Goodrich, Pia Gottschalk, Takashi Hirano, Hiroki Iwata, Gerald Jurasinski, Minseok Kang, Franziska Koebsch, Ivan Mammarella, Mats B. Nilsson, Keisuke Ono, Matthias Peichl, Olli Peltola, Youngryel Ryu, Torsten Sachs, Ayaka Sakabe, Jed Sparks, Eeva-Stiina Tuittila, George Vourlitis, Guan X Wong, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Benjamin Poulter, Robert B. Jackson
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Global response of terrestrial gross primary productivity to climate extremes

Extreme climate events undoubtedly have essential impacts on ecosystem gross primary productivity (GPP), but the global spatio-temporal patterns of GPP responses to climate extremes are unclear. In this study, we analyzed the responses of GPP to temperature and precipitation extremes during historical (1901–2016) and future (2006–2100) periods using climate extreme indices (CEIs) developed by the
Authors
Minshu Yuan, Qiuan Zhu, Jiang Zhang, Jinxun Liu, Huai Chen, Changhui Peng, Peng Li, Mingxu Li, Meng Wang, Pengxiang Zhao
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Western Geographic Science Center

Estimating soil organic carbon redistribution in three major river basins of China based on erosion processes

Soil erosion by water affects soil organic carbon (SOC) migration and distribution, which are important processes for defining ecosystem carbon sources and sinks. Little has been done to quantify soil carbon erosion in the three major basins in China, the Yangtze River, Yellow River and Pearl River Basins, which contain the most eroded areas. This research attempts to quantify the lateral movement
Authors
Yan Yang, Qiuan Zhu, Jinxun Liu, Mingxu Li, Minshu Yuan, Huai Chen, Changhui Peng, Zhenan Yang
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Western Geographic Science Center

Substantially greater carbon emissions estimated based on annual land-use transition data

Quantifying land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) effects on carbon sources and sinks has been very challenging because of the availability and quality of LULCC data. As the largest estuary in the United States, Chesapeake Bay is a rapidly changing region and is affected by human activities. A new annual land-use and land-cover (LULC) data product developed by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Chan
Authors
Jiaojiao Diao, Jinxun Liu, Zhiliang Zhu, Mingshi Li, Benjamin M. Sleeter
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Western Geographic Science Center

Critical land change information enhances the understanding of carbon balance in the United States

Large-scale terrestrial carbon (C) estimating studies using methods such as atmospheric inversion, biogeochemical modeling, and field inventories have produced different results. The goal of this study was to integrate fine-scale processes including land use and land cover change into a large-scale ecosystem framework. We analyzed the terrestrial C budget of the conterminous United States from 197
Authors
Jinxun Liu, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Zhiliang Zhu, Thomas Loveland, Terry L. Sohl, Stephen M. Howard, Carl H. Key, Todd Hawbaker, Shuguang Liu, Bradley C. Reed, Mark A. Cochrane, Linda S. Heath, Hong Jiang, David T. Price, Jing M. Chen, Decheng Zhou, Norman B. Bliss, Tamara S. Wilson, Jason T. Sherba, Qiuan Zhu, Yiqi Luo, Benjiamin Paulter
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Western Geographic Science Center

Effects of 21st century climate, land use, and disturbances on ecosystem carbon balance in California

Terrestrial ecosystems are an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), sequestering ~30% of annual anthropogenic emissions and slowing the rise of atmospheric CO2. However, the future direction and magnitude of the land sink is highly uncertain. We examined how historical and projected changes in climate, land use, and ecosystem disturbances affect the carbon balance of terrestrial eco
Authors
Benjamin M. Sleeter, David Marvin, D. Richard Cameron, Paul Selmants, LeRoy Westerling, Jason R. Kreitler, Colin Daniel, Jinxun Liu, Tamara S. Wilson
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Western Fisheries Research Center, Western Geographic Science Center

Science and Products