As 2024 comes to an end and we reflect on what we’ve achieved this year, it’s hard not to be impressed by the LEMONTREE team. From global conferences to high-impact publications, fieldwork, and workshops, the energy and dedication of everyone involved have been nothing short of inspiring. Here’s a roundup of what’s been happening in our little corner of the scientific world.

On the Road: Conferences, Fieldwork, and Collaboration

This year has been packed with opportunities to connect, share, and collaborate.

We kicked things off in February at the CESM Land Surface Model Working Group meeting, before heading to Vienna in April for EGU 2024. Later that same month, we joined the ISIMIP & PROCLIAS Workshop in Potsdam, for critical discussions on climate modelling.

In May, we participated in the Uncertainty, Climate Change, and Policy Challenges conference, engaging with policymakers and scientists to explore pathways to actionable solutions.

Fieldwork continued to be a cornerstone of our efforts, with Colin, Sandy, Wang Han, and the LPICEA team working on the ground in China this June. ECR Olivia Haas travelled to Montpellier, France, to deepen her expertise in fire modelling as part of the FIRE-ADAPT Project.

July was packed with back-to-back events: the Mathematical Models in Ecology and Evolution conference in Vienna and the Remote Sensing and Fluxes for Real-World Impact workshop in Berkeley.

In July, we also had a blast attending and presenting at events like the Ecological Society of America meeting in Long Beach, California, and the Cross-VESRI convening in Cambridge. Add to that the ICCS Summer School, and you can see we had a busy first half of the year! But it didn’t stop there.

In August, we held our very first ECR summer school in Utrecht, which was an incredible success, bringing together the brightest young minds for an unforgettable learning experience. Utrecht also hosted our in-person annual meeting – a much-needed chance to reconnect and brainstorm.

September saw short secondments for two Tsinghua University ECR’s, Yanghang Ren and Zhang Han. Whilst here, they attended the JULES Annual Meeting in person with Wenyao Gan (who also attended online). This meeting was held at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) in Wallingford.

In September, we also ran two workshops in the UK.  The Energy Partitioning Workshop in Hook, where we debated advances in plant pigment research, and the Global Fire Modelling Workshop at Dartington Hall, in Devon, exploring the future of fire models.

Colin and Sandy also spent a fruitful month in October as Distinguished Visiting Professors at Tsinghua University, China. They also visited Peking University for a meeting focused on ‘Modelling terrestrial ecosystem processes and interactions.’

Early career researchers (ECRs) Theo Keeping, Minxue Tang, and Jiaze Li took the spotlight at major climate events, attending COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the Convention of Biological Diversity COP16 in Cali, Colombia, respectively.

ECR Jan Lankhorst returned to Utrecht from his 3 month secondment at Texas Tech University. Jan was working with Nick Smith’s team on an experiment to better understand the interplay between soil resource availability and soil resource acquisition strategy on leaf-to-whole plant processes. When one secondment ends, another begins! Jianing Fang from Pierre Gentine’s team at Columbia University has just arrived at Seoul National University for a month of secondment with Youngryel Ryu (not LEMONTREE funded) and his team to implement differential BESS (Breathing Earth System Simulator).

To end the year, team members were out in force at the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C., representing LEMONTREE alongside colleagues from Texas Tech, Berkeley University, Pittsburgh University, and Seoul National University.

It’s now time for the team to get some well-earned rest.

Papers, Papers, Papers

What a year for publications! The LEMONTREE team has had an extraordinary 2024, with 20 papers published and many more already accepted or in the pipeline. We’ve published in leading journals such as Nature, Science, and another Tansley Review in the New Phytologist. You can check out the publications tab for our full list of 2024 publications, but here are some of the highlights:

  • “Evidence for Widespread Thermal Acclimation of Canopy Photosynthesis” in Nature Plants
  • “Principles for Satellite Monitoring of Vegetation Carbon Uptake” in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment.
  • The Tansley Review in New Phytologist, focusing on “Empirical evidence and theoretical understanding of ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycle interactions”.
  • “Global Drivers of Wildfire” in Frontiers in Environmental Sciences.
  • “Global Patterns of Plant Functional Traits and Their Relationships to Climate” in Communications Biology.
  • “GEOSIF: A Continental-Scale Sub-Daily Reconstructed Solar-Induced Fluorescence Derived from OCO-3 and GK-2A Over Eastern Asia and Oceania” in Remote Sensing of Environment.
  • “Persistent Global Greening Over the Last Four Decades Using Novel Long-Term Vegetation Index Data with Enhanced Temporal Consistency” in Remote Sensing of Environment.
  • “Global Critical Soil Moisture Thresholds of Plant Water Stress” in Nature Communications.
  • “Bomb Radiocarbon Evidence for Strong Global Carbon Uptake and Turnover in Terrestrial Vegetation” in Science.
  • “Mapping the Global Distribution of C4 Vegetation Using Observations and Optimality Theory” in Nature Communications.
  • “Diminishing Carryover Benefits of Earlier Spring Vegetation Growth” in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
  • “Acclimation of Photosynthesis to CO2 Increases Ecosystem Carbon Storage Due to Leaf Nitrogen Savings” in Global Change Biology.

Special recognition goes to Guilia Mengoli, whose work on “Ecosystem Photosynthesis in Land-Surface Models: A First Principles Approach Incorporating Acclimation” in the Journal of Advances in Modelling Earth Systems earned her a spot among Wiley’s most-cited authors of 2022-2023 that was announced this year. Incredible work, Guilia!

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Looking Ahead to 2025

2024 has been a standout year for LEMONTREE, and the momentum shows no signs of slowing down. In 2025, we’re gearing up for an exciting new chapter as we begin the process of integrating our EEO model into Land Surface Models. This marks a pivotal moment for the project, and we’re eager to demonstrate to the Land Surface Modelling community that our simplified models can deliver equal, if not greater, accuracy to climate predictions—all while relying on significantly fewer parameters.

A huge thank you to our entire team for their hard work, enthusiasm, and commitment. Whether you’ve been in the field, at your desk, or on the move, every contribution has made this year exceptional.

Here’s to a relaxing holiday period and an even more exciting 2025. See you all next year!

Warm wishes,
The LEMONTREE Team