Scholars@Duke
Liyin He

Liyin He

Assistant Professor of Ecology
Environmental Natural Science

Selected Publications

Integrated irrigation and nitrogen optimization is a resource-efficient adaptation strategy for US maize and soybean production.

Journal Article Nature food · April 2025 Climate change poses substantial challenges to agriculture and crop production, but the combined role of nitrogen and water inputs in adaptation has been largely overlooked. Here, by developing regression models using US county-level data (2008-2020), we d ... Full text Cite

Global patterns of nitrogen saturation in forests

Journal Article One Earth · January 2025 Full text Cite

Trade-offs in agricultural outcomes across farm sizes

Journal Article Earth Critical Zone · June 2024 Full text Cite

Dynamic Traffic Data in Machine-Learning Air Quality Mapping Improves Environmental Justice Assessment.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · January 2024 Air pollution poses a critical public health threat around many megacities but in an uneven manner. Conventional models are limited to depict the highly spatial- and time-varying patterns of ambient pollutant exposures at the community scale for megacities ... Full text Cite

The weekly cycle of photosynthesis in Europe reveals the negative impact of particulate pollution on ecosystem productivity.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · December 2023 Aerosols can affect photosynthesis through radiative perturbations such as scattering and absorbing solar radiation. This biophysical impact has been widely studied using field measurements, but the sign and magnitude at continental scales remain uncertain ... Full text Cite

Elucidating climatic drivers of photosynthesis by tropical forests.

Journal Article Global change biology · September 2023 Tropical forests play a pivotal role in regulating the global carbon cycle. However, the response of these forests to changes in absorbed solar energy and water supply under the changing climate is highly uncertain. Three-year (2018-2021) spaceborne high-r ... Full text Cite

Unequal exposure to heatwaves in Los Angeles: Impact of uneven green spaces.

Journal Article Science advances · April 2023 Cities worldwide are experiencing record-breaking summer temperatures. Urban environments exacerbate extreme heat, resulting in not only the urban heat island but also intracity variations in heat exposure. Understanding these disparities is crucial to sup ... Full text Cite

Solutions to agricultural green water scarcity under climate change.

Journal Article PNAS nexus · April 2023 Rain-fed agricultural systems, which solely depend on green water (i.e. soil moisture from rainfall), sustain ∼60% of global food production and are particularly vulnerable to vagaries in temperature and precipitation patterns, which are intensifying due t ... Full text Cite

Marked Impacts of Pollution Mitigation on Crop Yields in China

Journal Article Earth S Future · November 1, 2022 Plant growth and crop harvest are impacted by both climate change and air pollution. However, their relative importance in crop yields remains elusive, especially in heavily polluted regions. Here we develop crop yield prediction models, based on a large v ... Full text Cite

Remote-Sensing Derived Trends in Gross Primary Production Explain Increases in the CO2 Seasonal Cycle Amplitude

Journal Article Global Biogeochemical Cycles · September 1, 2022 An increase in the seasonal cycle amplitude (SCA) of atmospheric CO2 since the 1960s has been observed in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). However, the underlying dominant drivers are still debated. The peak season CO2 uptake by vegetati ... Full text Cite

Testing stomatal models at the stand level in deciduous angiosperm and evergreen gymnosperm forests using CliMA Land (v0.1)

Journal Article Geoscientific Model Development · November 5, 2021 Abstract. At the leaf level, stomata control the exchange of water and carbon across the air–leaf interface. Stomatal conductance is typically modeled empirically, based on environmental conditions at the leaf surface. Recently developed stomatal o ... Full text Cite

Comment on "Recent global decline of CO2 fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis".

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · September 2021 Wang et al. (Research Articles, 11 December 2020, p. 1295), using photosynthesis proxies from long-term satellite records, report a significant decline in CO2 fertilization effects. We find that small systematic biases in Advanced Very Hi ... Full text Cite

Assessing the benefit of satellite-based Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence in crop yield prediction

Journal Article International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation · August 2020 Full text Cite

Tracking Seasonal and Interannual Variability in Photosynthetic Downregulation in Response to Water Stress at a Temperate Deciduous Forest

Journal Article Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences · August 1, 2020 The understanding and modeling of photosynthetic dynamics affected by climate variability can be highly uncertain. In this paper, we examined a well-characterized eddy covariance site in a drought-prone temperate deciduous broadleaf forest combining tower ... Full text Cite

From the Ground to Space: Using Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence to Estimate Crop Productivity

Journal Article Geophysical Research Letters · April 16, 2020 Timely and accurate monitoring of crops is essential for food security. Here, we examine how well solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) can inform crop productivity across the United States. Based on tower-level observations and process-based modeli ... Full text Cite

Cropland Carbon Uptake Delayed and Reduced by 2019 Midwest Floods

Journal Article AGU Advances · March 2020 AbstractWhile large‐scale floods directly impact human lives and infrastructures, they also profoundly impact agricultural productivity. New satellite observations of vegetation activity and atmospheric CO2 Full text Cite

Atmospheric Methane Emissions Correlate With Natural Gas Consumption From Residential and Commercial Sectors in Los Angeles

Journal Article Geophysical Research Letters · January 1, 2019 Legislation in the State of California mandates reductions in emissions of short-lived climate pollutants of 40% from 2013 levels by 2030 for CH4. Identification of the sector(s) responsible for these emissions and their temporal and spatial var ... Full text Cite