Aline Jaimes

Position:

• PhD Student Environmental Science and Engineering Program

Primary Research Project:

• Monitoring Carbon, energy and water balance in a Chihuahuan Desert shrubland using eddy covariance methods.

Contact details:

Started at UTEP:

Education:

• 2006-  MSc.  Management and Preservation of Natural Resources focus on physical and biological oceanography. Northwest Center of Biological Research, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

• 2001- BSc .  Biology. University of Veracruz, Xalapa Veracruz, México.

Research Interests:

• (In alphabetical order): Climate change, cyberinfrastructure, hyperspectral remote sensing applied to ecology, atmosphere and water bodies, micrometeorology, primary production, and teaching science to kids.

Favorite Technologies:

• Our Eddy covariance tower at the Jornada.

Favorite Field Site:

• The Jornada LTER.

Hobbies:

Ambitions:

• To be able to address environmental problems  using technologies that can be applied in a broad range of ecosystems (land, coastal areas, and ocean).

Personal Statement:

• I grew up in Xalapa, which is the state capital of Veracruz in central-east coast of Mexico. I recently joined to UTEP and I feel very fortunate to work in the SEL with such extraordinary people.

• As an environmental science student at UTEP, I am very interested in understanding the impacts and feedbacks of global change around the world. With the recent warming of the poles, the release of huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere will have tremendous implications on ecosystems around the world. However, the net carbon flux of arid and semiarid regions remains relatively unstudied compared to other ecosystems. My dissertation project will be addressing this subject through the establishment of an eddy covariance tower and biomesonet tower to measure CO2, energy and water balance. This tower will be coupled to mid-range optical sampling tools that utilize a robotic tramline system that will allow scaling of ground based relationships between optical reflectance and various ecosystems functional and structural attributes to the landscape level using satellite remote sensing. This technology is being implemented at the Jornada Basin Experimental Range (an LTER site). This project is supported by NSF through UTEP's Cyber-ShARE Center of excellence.

Miscellaneous:

• Checkout the Jornada LTER
• My project is affiliated with UTEP's CyberShARE Center of Excellence.