Chunyu Dong
Postdoctoral Scholar
Department of Geography
Bunche Hall, A155
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Chunyu Dong is a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Department of Geography. He has a research background in the fields of ecohydrology and snow hydrology. Chunyu’s research seeks to understand the impacts of climate change on water cycle and terrestrial ecosystems at various scales. Multiple methods have been applied in his studies, e.g. remote sensing, hydrological modeling, field observations, and hydrogeochemical analysis. He has developed novel algorithms for improving satellite snow data, which can significantly increase accuracy of the remotely sensed snow maps and remove all the cloud pixels. He has also contributed to developing the time-lapse photography as a snow process monitoring technique. Chunyu obtained his Ph.D. in Hydrology and Climatology at the Heidelberg University (2016). He currently works with Prof. Glen MacDonald, Prof. Gregory Okin and Prof. Thomas Gillespie, as a team member of an interdisciplinary project that aims at investigating the impacts and implications of the recent drought for the habitats and energy infrastructure in southern California. His research focuses on investigating the differential vegetation sensitivity to drought across ecological communities, the interactions between wildfire activities, vegetation dynamics, drought, and climate change in California.
Selected Publications
Okin, G.S., Dong, C., Willis, K.S., Gillespie, T.W., & MacDonald, G.M. (2018): The impact of drought on native southern California vegetation: remote sensing analysis using MODIS-derived time series. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 123, 1927–1939. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JG004485
Gillespie, T.W., Ostermann-Kelm, S., Dong, C., Willis, K.S., Okin, G.S., & MacDonald, G.M. (2018): Monitoring changes of NDVI in protected areas of southern California. Ecological Indicators, 88, 485–494. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.01.031
Dong, C. (2018): Remote sensing, hydrological modeling and in situ observations in snow cover research: a review. Journal of Hydrology, 561, 573–583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.04.027
Dong, C., & Menzel, L. (2017): Snow process monitoring in montane forests with time-lapse photography. Hydrological Processes, 31, 2872–2886. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.11229
Dong, C.Y., & Menzel, L. (2016): Producing cloud-free MODIS snow cover products with conditional probability interpolation and meteorological data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 186, 439–451. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.09.019
Dong, C.Y., & Menzel, L. (2016): Improving the accuracy of MODIS 8-day snow products with in situ temperature and precipitation data. Journal of Hydrology, 534, 466-477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.12.065
Liu, Z.Y., Menzel, L., Dong, C.Y., & Fang, R.H. (2015): Temporal dynamics and spatial patterns of drought and the relation to ENSO: a case study in Northwest China. International Journal of Climatology, 8, 2886–2898.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.4526
