Professor Lina Mercado

About me:

Biography

I work at the University of Exeter since June 2011 and since 2012 hold a 30% subcontract with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) in Wallingford, UK where I previously had a permanent job as a land surface modeller from 2004 till 2011. I have a close collaboration with the multidisciplinary team of JULES modellers at CEH. CEH holds expertise on hydrological modelling, land atmosphere interactions and ecological processes.

I did my PhD on modelling canopy photosynthesis in the Amazon Rainforest at the Max Planck Insitute of Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany (2000-2004, supervised by Jon Lloyd and Han Dolman) and obtained my PhD degree from the Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I did an MSc in Environmental Sciences at Lund University, Sweden (1998-1999, supervised by Sharon Cowling and Harald Sverdrup) with a dissertation on modelling the effects of deforestation on carbon and water dynamics within the Colombian Amazon rainforest. My undegraduate degree is in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellin, Colombia, my home country.

See my webpage with more information on my research

Interests:

I am a plant ecophysiologist & vegetation/biogeochemical modeller. I use observations and computer models to understand how plants respond to climate and in turn how cilmate is affected by vegetation. A current focus of my research is the response of plants to climate change, especially their response to increases in temperature.

Main areas of research include:

Carbon and H20 cycles, photosynthesis, transpiration, radiation interception, nutrient constraints on plant productivity, N and P cycles, plant responses to temperature both globally but also regionally. Current regional work has focus on Amazon, temperate and boreal ecosystems.

A primary aim of my work is to improve representation of plant physiological processes within earth system models (ESMs) in order to improve predictions of present and future land surface -climate interactions and climate. I have been working with the JULES land surface model of the UK ESM for the past ten years for which I am vegetation theme leader.

Fieldwork

I use data -collected by others but also by me- to improve process understanding and representation within models and for model evaluation. As part of various field & modelling projects, I have been involved in the design and execution of field campaigns in the tropics (Amazon: Peru, Ecuador - as part of the RAINFOR consortium; Brazil- as part of the AFEX project ), semi arid (Mali- as part of the AMMA project) and temperate regions (BIFOR -FACE Birmingham, as part of the elevated CO2 experiment http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/bifor/face/index.aspx, Wytham woods in Oxfordshire, Bangor - as part of the Surf to Turf project; and Wetzstein forest in Germany). This includes gas exchange measurements (photosynthesis & respiration) in the tropics (Manaus), and in the temperate forest (various sites in the UK), leaf and wood sampling for leaf mass per area, nutrient analysis, wood density in Amazon forest in Peru and Ecuador, soil respiration in girdled and non-girdled forest in Wetzstein, Thuringia-Germany, and stomatal conductance, soil moisture and surface temperature in semi arid ecosystems in West Africa (Hombori, Mali).

Advertising of current PhD and MSc by Research projects 

PhD NERC Studentships for UK students

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/money/fundingsearch/awarddetails/?id=3686

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/money/fundingsearch/awarddetails/?id=3703

MSc by Research projects

http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/research/mbyres/topics/vegetation/#a0

http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/research/mbyres/

Qualifications:

PhD Modelling Canopy photosynthesis in the Amazon Basin, Free University of Amsterdam

Msc Environmental Sciences, University of Lund, Sweden

Bsc in Chemical Engineering, National University of Colombia, Medellín