Forest Interiors And Edges
How does cooling and buffering change from open edge to forest interior?
The work examines thermal and humidity gradients, sheltering effects, and asymmetric edge behavior across forest types and seasons.
Research
STRUCTURE,
MICROCLIMATE,
AND RESPONSE
The research asks how three-dimensional vegetation structure regulates radiation, temperature, humidity, and ecological response across forest interiors, edges, and broader landscape settings.
VegLab, Yunnan University · Field ecology, UAV-LiDAR, process-based modeling, and spatial analysis
Research Questions
What the research is trying to explain.
The common thread is scale: how three-dimensional vegetation structure propagates into light fields, turbulent exchange, microclimate gradients, and ecological outcomes.
Canopy Light Heterogeneity
How does structure create fine-scale light variability inside forests?
Voxel-based metrics and spatial descriptors are used to connect canopy architecture, understory light patchiness, and ecological opportunity.
Structure Sensing
How can UAV-LiDAR and drone data reconstruct ecologically meaningful forest structure?
UAV and LiDAR observations are used to map fine-scale canopy architecture and feed physically meaningful structure into microclimate and ecosystem analysis.
Ecological Interpretation
How do structure and microclimate relate to biomass, diversity, and regeneration?
The aim is to connect measured or modeled climate heterogeneity with community patterns, functional diversity, biomass, and plant-environment interactions.
Methods
How the work is carried out.
The page is structured around clear method layers so the research is easier to read than a broad biography page.
Microclimate Observations
Temperature, humidity, and radiation measurements across forest interiors, edges, and reference openings.
UAV-LiDAR And Drone Data
Fine-scale canopy structure sensing for light analysis, edge characterization, and ecological mapping.
Physical Microclimate Models
Energy balance, wind-mediated asymmetry, and structure-aware representations of near-surface climate.
Spatial And Statistical Workflows
Voxel analysis, multiscale comparison, structure metrics, and reproducible ecological computing.
Recent Outputs
Verified papers that show the current scope of the work.
The examples below were selected to keep the page readable while still reflecting recent public academic records.
2026 | PLOS One
Edge-to-interior cooling gradients across forest patches in southwestern China.
A recent paper on the spatiotemporal variation of maximum cooling across forest interiors and edges, with an associated open dataset.
2024 | Methods Paper
FLApy turns three-dimensional light heterogeneity into reusable analysis.
A methods paper and code release for quantifying forest light availability heterogeneity with voxel-based descriptors and reproducible workflows.
2024 | Working Paper
Mechanistic edge microclimate modeling with canopy structure and wind flow.
A physically based framework coupling UAV-LiDAR structure, wind flow, and heat transfer to explain wind-mediated microclimate asymmetry at forest edges.
2025 | Forest Ecology And Management
Forest structure outperforms traits, topography, and soil for biomass prediction.
A recent co-authored paper showing that structure can predict aboveground biomass more strongly than several trait and environment summaries across spatial scales.