Natalia Restrepo-Coupe

I had the honor of being the first post-doc in the Saleska Lab from 2006-2011.  In 2015, I again started working with the Saleska Lab as a research consultant managing the eddy covariance, SIF, thermal and hyperspectral camera measurements at Santarem K67 -our Amazon research site.

As a Micrometeorologist, I study carbon, energy and water exchange at tropical forests. My research aims to quantify and understand the seasonality of ecosystem productivity and evapotranspiration at different ecosystem types and in particular at evergreen tropical forest sites across the Amazon basin. At K67 I do study the tropical vegetation responses to climate (“normal” times) and the different strategies plants take under anomalous events (e.g. forest growth during drought). For this purpose, I look at the phenological (e.g. leaf out) and meteorological (e.g. solar radiation) drivers of carbon, water and energy fluxes. I combine land surface models results and remote sensing observations (from tower-mounted optical sensors and satellites) with eddy covariance fluxes and biometric measurements as a way to measure and site observations to ecosystems and regions.