Understanding carbon, biodiversity, and climate interactions
Explore Our WorkThe Global Ecology Lab conducts research on the structure, function and dynamics of ecological systems, and their interactions in the Earth system. Our primary approach is to combine data and mathematics to develop models for quantifying patterns and predicting future dynamics. Current research is focused on the development and application of models to address issues such as: terrestrial carbon balance, the sustainability of land-use practices, the effects of disturbances on ecosystem structure and function, and interactions between the biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
Global Carbon Modeling and Simulation
Modeling changes in land use over time
Mapping, modelling, and monitoring changes to the world's forest carbon.
The National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) awarded Professor George Hurtt of the Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG) the Outstanding Support for Geography Education Award during the NCGE Annual Conference on Oct. 16 in Richmond, Virginia. The award honors individuals who work outside of the formal classroom and make outstanding contributions to geography education.
George Hurtt is a coauthor on a paper titled "Episodic changes in global forest edges in the 21st century", published in Nature Communications!
George Hurtt has been honored as one of the 2026 Scilit Top Cited Scholars, ranking among the world’s outstanding researchers with remarkable publication and citation influence.
Welcome new PhD students Eni Awowale and Sarah Liu to GEL!
Shuo Xu is the first author on a paper titled "Knowledge-Guided Learning for Global Carbon Flux Prediction: Integrating High-Level Remote Sensing with Bottom-Up Physical Modeling", that will be presented in at the KDD Conference in South Korea on August 10th. Zhihao Wang, Yiqun Xie, Ruohan Li, Lei Ma and George Hurtt are coauthors.
Lei Ma and George Hurtt have led a a paper titled "Widespread carbon accumulation in mature forests remains underestimated by satellite observations", published in Nature Ecology and Evolution!