about me

Director of R&D at Kateri
email: kevinptu@gmail.com

I am an ecosystem ecologist who studies carbon, water and energy exchange between plants, soils and the atmosphere. My work spans fields of ecophysiology, biometeorology and biogeochemistry, and spatial scales from individual leaves to the entire global land surface. A central focus of my research is on the development of remote sensing methods for quantifying plant and ecosystem function. For this I leverage emergent properties of biogeophysical systems that simplify the representation of the complex processes governing carbon, water and energy fluxes. Understanding these emergent relations enables robust parameterization of remote sensing algorithms and land surface models needed to monitor and predict spatial and temporal variation in ecosystem function and the services they provide. 

After many years as a research scientist studying temperate forest ecosystems of New England (University of New Hampshire/USDA Forest Service), redwood forests, grasslands and oak savannas of California (UC Berkeley), and agriculture systems of the Midwest (Pioneer/Corteva Agriscience),  I have worked the last several years in the nature-based climate solution space, previously as Senior Ecologist with Grassroots Carbon and currently as the science lead for Kateri. This work is focused on accelerating the adoption of regenerative land management practices that promote improved ecosystem function and services (CO2 storage, water cycling, biodiversity). 

Throughout my career I have worked with a wide range of quantitative methods, from leaf gas exchange to eddy covariance, drone imaging to satellite remote sensing, and stable isotope biogeochemistry to ecosystem modeling. Notably, I developed the PT-JPL model for satellite remote sensing of evapotranspiration used by various agencies and organizations - from NASA (ECOSTRESS) and EDF (OpenET) to ESA (WACMOS-ET). I was also instrumental in getting the drone program at Corteva 'off the ground' and was a member of the first 'gold standard' QA/QC team during the early days of the AmeriFlux flux tower network. I received my PhD in Natural Resources from the University of New Hampshire (advisor Dave Hollinger) on remote sensing and modeling CO2 exchange between plants, soil and the atmosphere.