Yuyu Zhou

Iowa State University | ISU · Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences

The nighttime light (NTL) observations from Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescane System (DMSP/OLS) offer great potentials to study urban dynamics from regional to global scales, for more than two decades. In this paper, we presented a new approach to develop spatially and temporally consistent global urban maps from 1992 t...

Urbanization has caused environmental changes, such as urban heat islands (UHIs), that affect terrestrial ecosystems. However, how and to what extent urbanization affects plant phenology remains relatively unexplored. Here, we investigated the changes in the satellite-derived start of season (SOS) and the covariation between SOS and temperature (R...

To the Editor — Alongside the unparalleled changes in global climate, our home planet is experiencing an unprecedented period of urbanization, which is expected to continue across the next few decades. For plants, the impacts of urbanization, such as altered air quality, light regimes and water and nutrient availability, can induce large shifts in...

Information on urban built-up infrastructure is essential to understand the role of cities in shaping environmental, economic, and social outcomes. The lack of data on built-up heights over large areas has limited our ability to characterize urban infrastructure and its spatial variations across the world. Here, we developed a global atlas of urban...

Unprecedented efforts to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions show an urgent need to avoid the detrimental impact of climatic change, such as urban overheating. While different sources account for sizable GHG emissions, US residential building energy consumption accounts for about 50% of CO2 emissions. Therefore, residential buildings provide a signi...

The information of global spatially explicit urban extents under scenarios is important to mitigate future environmental risks caused by global urbanization and climate change. Although future dynamics of urban extent were commonly modelled with conversion from non-urban to urban using cellular automata (CA) based models, gradual changes of impervi...

The cellular automata (CA) based models have been extensively used in urban sprawl modeling to support sustainable urban planning. However, in most existing urban CA models, only abrupt conversion (i.e., from non-urban to urban) was considered, whereas the difference in urbanization levels among different grids, as well as the nature of continuous...

Background: Studies on the health effects of heat are particularly limited in Texas, the U.S. state with the top ten highest number of annual heat-related deaths per capita from 2018 to 2020. This study aims to assess the effects of heat on all-cause and cause-specific mortality in 12 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across Texas from 1990 to...

Urban vegetation, a harbinger of future global vegetation change, is controlled by complex urban environments. The urban-rural gradient in vegetation greenness trends and their responses to biogeochemical drivers (e.g. elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate warming) and land-cover changes, however, remain unclear. Here we used satellite...

Near-surface air temperature (T a) is a key variable in global climate studies. A global gridded dataset of daily maximum and minimum T a (T max and T min) is particularly valuable and critically needed in the scientific and policy communities but is still not available. In this paper, we developed a global dataset of daily T max and T min at 1 km...

Accurate estimation of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is vital for informing ecosystem and carbon management. The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) instrument—a new-generation spaceborne lidar system from NASA—provides the first global coverage of high-resolution 3D altimetry data aimed specifically for mapping Earth’s forests, but i...

Past two decades have witnessed a rapid urbanization process in China, with the urbanization ratio suddenly increasing from 30.9 % to 63.9 %. Physical urban areas (PUA) are fundamental indicators to monitoring and evaluating urbanization, which differ from administrative urban areas and are much complicated to identify, as PUA contain heterogeneous...

Very-high-resolution (VHR) land cover and land use (LCLU) is an essential baseline data for understanding fine-scale interactions between humans and the heterogeneous landscapes of urban environments. In this study, we developed a Fine-resolution, Large-area Urban Thematic information Extraction (FLUTE) framework to address multiple challenges faci...

Near-surface air temperature (Ta) is one of the key variables in a variety of studies such as hydrological modeling, assessment of heat waves, and energy modeling. Among existing methods, statistical algorithms are suitable for integrating auxiliary spatial data with station-based Ta data to produce gridded Ta over large areas. However, existing st...

Research on the evolutionary ecology of urban areas reveals how human-induced evolutionary changes affect biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. In a rapidly urbanizing world imposing many selective pressures, a time-sensitive goal is to identify the emergent issues and research priorities that affect the ecology and evolution of species wi...

Although several products of the global urban extent with fine resolutions (e.g. 30 m-38 m) have been developed, quantitative evaluations of these products across spaces and times are still missing, which is crucial to future urban growth modeling. Here, we analysed the discrepancy of six global fine resolution urban extent products across spaces a...

Near-surface air temperature (Ta) is a key variable in global climate studies. A global gridded dataset of daily maximum and minimum Ta (Tmax and Tmin) is particularly valuable and critically needed in the scientific and policy communities, but is still not available. In this paper, we developed a global dataset of daily Tmax and Tmin dataset at 1-...

Agriculture is a major water user, especially in dry and drought-prone areas that rely on irrigation to support agricultural production. In recent years, the over-extraction of groundwater, exacerbated by climate change, population growth, and intensive agricultural irrigation, has led to a drop in water levels and impacts the hydrological cycle. U...

In recent decades, nighttime light (NTL) images have been widely explored to portray human footprints. Most of the studies used monthly or yearly temporal composite NTL products as a solution for invalid observations due to cloud coverage and outlier signals. However, the impact of temporal compositing on NTL data and its applications remains large...

Spring phenology plays an essential role in climate change, terrestrial ecosystem, and public health. Field-based monitoring and understanding of changes in spring phenology for long periods and in large regions are challenging due to the limited in-site observations. Space-based remotely sensed observations offer great potentials for monitoring de...

Zipf’s law, characterizing the rank-size distribution of city size or population, has been widely applied in urban studies. Previous studies on Zipf’s law mainly focused on the spatial dimension of urban size and population, with limited consideration of its temporal dynamics. Here, we proposed a conceptual model to characterize the spatial sprawl...

The increasing heat stress from the combined effect of changes such as temperature and humidity in the context of global change receives growing concerns. However, there is limited information for future changes in heat stress, as well as its potential socioeconomic impact, under the intended nationally determined mitigation scenarios. This study e...

Aerosol loadings and their spatial distribution are among the most important atmospheric information needed for a range of applications such as air quality monitoring, climate research, and public health. A key measure of aerosol quantity is aerosol optical depth (AOD) and it has been routinely observed from space by Earth observing satellites/inst...

Artificial light at night (ALAN), an increasing anthropogenic driver, is widespread and shows rapid expansion with potential adverse impact on the terrestrial ecosystem. However, whether and to what extent does ALAN affect plant phenology, a critical factor influencing the timing of terrestrial ecosystem processes, remains unexplored due to limited...

Land surface temperature (LST) is one of the most important and widely used parameters for studying land surface processes. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST products (e.g., MOD11A1 and MYD11A1) can provide this information with moderate spatiotemporal resolution with global coverage. However, the applications of these data...

Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of global urbanization over a long time series is increasingly important for sustainable development goals. The harmonized nighttime light (NTL) time-series composites created by fusing multi-source NTL observations provide a long and consistent record of the nightscape for characterizing and understanding...

Anthropogenic heat (AH) emission from buildings is a key contributor to the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Although an improved understanding of spatiotemporal patterns of building AH is highly needed for mitigating UHI effect, such information is still limited in high spatiotemporal resolutions at the city level. In this study, a bottom-up city b...

Surface albedo is a key parameter in the surface energy balance and has been identified as a primary essential climate variable (ECV). Variations in surface albedo can be used as a diagnostic tool for local climate change. This is particularly true in urban areas, where the impacts of land cover conversion due to increasing anthropogenic demands ca...

An improved understanding of global Urban Exposure to Flooding (UEF) is essential for developing risk-reduction strategies for sustainable urban development. This study is the first to assess the long-term historical global UEF at fine spatial resolution (i.e., 30 m) and annual temporal frequency, with consideration of smaller urban areas in the ex...

An improved understanding of urban heat island (UHI) is important in urban ecological environment studies. In this study, we investigated footprint (FP) and surface UHI (SUHI) intensity from 2003 to 2020 in 141 China cities using a Gaussian model and multi-source remote sensing data. Results showed that annual daytime FP in 79% cities was larger th...

Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of global urbanization over a long time series is increasingly important for sustainable development goals. The harmonized time-series nighttime light (NTL) composites by fusing multi-source NTL observations provide a long and consistent record of the nightscape for characterizing and understanding the glob...

Land surface temperature (LST) is one of the most important and widely used parameter for studying land surface processes. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST products (e.g., MOD11A1 and MYD11A1) can provide this information with high spatiotemporal resolution with global coverage. However, the broad applications of these data...

Vegetation indices are widely used to derive land surface phenology (LSP). However, due to inconsistent illumination geometries, reflectance varies with solar zenith angles (SZA), which in turn affects the vegetation indices, and thus the derived LSP. To examine the SZA effect on LSP, the MODIS bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF)...

Phenological transitions determine the timing of changes in land surface properties and the seasonality of exchanges of biosphere-atmosphere energy, water, and carbon. Accurate mechanistic modeling of phenological processes is therefore critical to understand and correctly predict terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks with changing atmospheric and climat...

The rapid urbanization in central and eastern China has posed a major threat to the green sustainable development of the ecological environment. However, the understanding of the interactive coupling mechanism between urbanization and eco-environmental quality (EEQ) remains to be developed. Understanding their interactive coupling mechanism is of g...

Long term, global records of urban extent can help evaluate environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities. Remotely sensed observations can provide insights into historical urban dynamics, but only during the satellite era. Here, we develop a 1 km resolution global dataset of annual urban dynamics between 1870 and 2100 using an urban cellular a...

The impacts of urbanization on terrestrial thermal and hydrological changes should be considered for sustainable development of urban environment and economy. However, previous studies mainly focused on the impacts at short time scales, which is insufficient to provide the needed information. This study augmented the high‐resolution Conjunctive Sur...

Water temperature is an important indicator of the health of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and influences numerous biological and chemical processes that affect water quality, the health and productivity of biota, and other ecosystem services. In this study, we improved the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to explicitly consider the...

The purpose of this study was to investigate urban heat island (UHI) effects on building energy consumption and energy costs for dwellings in a neighbourhood of Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The innovation we present is a sensitivity analysis rather than a traditional simulation. Parameters in this analysis included building materials, trees, and two sets...

Ongoing climate variability and change is impacting pollen exposure dynamics among sensitive populations. However, pollen data that can provide beneficial information to allergy experts and patients alike remains elusive. The lack of high spatial resolution pollen data has resulted in a growing interest in using phenology information that is derive...

Cellular automata (CA)-based models have been extensively used in urban expansion modeling because of their simplicity, flexibility and intuitiveness. Previous studies on CA-based urban growth modeling have mainly focused on the process of spatial allocation of increased urban lands; however, the temporal contexts during the simulation have not bee...

High spatiotemporal population data are critical for a wide range of applications (e.g. urban planning and management, risk assessment, and epidemic control). However, such data are still not widely available due to the limited knowledge of complex human activities. Here we proposed a spatiotemporal downscaling framework for estimating hourly popul...

Many cities have been suffering from severe water deficiency in recent years due to rapid urban expansion, socioeconomic development, population growth, and climate change. Domestic water use plays an important role in the total urban water use. A framework for estimating domestic water use is highly needed to develop adaptive measures for efficien...

Large fractions of human-altered lands are working landscapes where people and nature interact to balance social, economic, and ecological needs. Achieving these sustainability goals requires tracking human footprints and landscape disturbance at fine scales over time—an effort facilitated by remote sensing but still under development. Here, we rep...

Compound hot-dry climate extremes could lead to severer natural disasters and socio-economic impacts compared to individual events. An improved understanding of historical heatwave-drought compounds and their difference compared to heatwaves alone is needed for better predicting the occurrence and impacts of extremes under a changing climate. In th...

Anthropogenic heat is a dominant component in the urban surface energy system and a key to understanding urban thermal environments. The top-down method was widely used to estimate anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) using statistical energy consumption data and proxies. However, there are several limitations. First, the coarse resolutions of current pro...

Most people in the world live in urban areas, and their high population densities, heavy reliance on external sources of food, energy, and water, and disproportionately large waste production result in severe and cumulative negative environmental effects. Integrated study of urban areas requires a system-of-systems analytical framework that include...

In vegetation remote sensing, the apparent radiation of the vegetation canopy is often combined with three components derived from different parts of vegetation that have different production mechanisms and optical properties: volume scattering L vol , polarized light L pol , and chlorophyll fluorescence ChlF. The chlorophyll fluorescence plays a v...

Global surface water classification layers, such as the European Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) Monthly Water History dataset, provide a starting point for accurate and large scale analyses of trends in waterbody extents. On the local scale, there is an opportunity to increase the accuracy and temporal frequency of these surface water maps by using...

The nighttime light (NTL) satellite data have been widely used to investigate the urbanization process. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) stable nighttime light data and Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) nighttime light data are two widel...

Vegetation phenology in spring has substantially advanced under climate warming, consequently shifting the seasonality of ecosystem process and altering biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks. However, whether and to what extent photoperiod (i.e., daylength) affects the phenological advancement is unclear, leading to large uncertainties in projecting futur...

Hydropower accounts for approximately 60% of electricity generation in Canada, with growth expected in the coming decades as part of renewable energy transitions; however, frequent cost overruns threaten the viability of this growth. Using the integrated assessment model GCAM, we develop an endogenous representation of hydropower for Canada that ac...

This paper considers the estimation and inference of spatially varying coefficient models, while preserving the sign of the coefficient functions. In practice, there are various situations where coefficient functions are assumed to be in a certain subspace. For example, they should be either nonnegative or nonpositive on a domain by their nature. H...

Islands which support numerous biodiversity are subject to increasing anthropogenic disturbance with the ever-growing coastal urbanization especially in developing countries. It is essential to monitor the island urban expansion trajectories to support sustainable policy making for ecological conservation and environmental management. However, curr...

This study investigated future bioenergy supply and demand from energy crops in China using the GCAM-integrated assessment model under different climate policy scenarios. The results indicated that China has rich resources of energy crops and marginal land for developing bioenergy. Under future carbon related policies, bioenergy production will con...

Urban heat island (UHI) plays an important role in urban sustainability under climate change. Urbanization is the driving force of UHI. However, the quantification of UHI's response to urbanization is still challenging due to the lack of robust and continuous temperature and urbanization datasets and reliable quantification methods. This study deve...

The authors are founding team members of a new effort to develop an Open Energy Outlook for the United States. The effort aims to apply best practices of policy-focused energy system modeling, ensure transparency, build a networked community, and work toward a common purpose: examining possible US energy system futures to inform energy and climate...

The long-term urban dynamics at regional and global scales is essential to understanding the urbanization processes and environmental consequences for providing better scientific insights and effective decision-making. The time series of consistent nighttime light (NTL) data generated by integrating the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Oper...

The nighttime light (NTL) satellite data have been widely used to investigate urbanization process. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) stable nighttime light data and Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership-Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) nighttime light data are two widely us...

China has experienced rapid urbanization over the past decades, which has changed the physical environment of its urban areas. Based on Aqua/Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature observations from the Google Earth Engine, this study focuses on the difference in daytime and night-time temperature between the...