Dennis D Baldocchi

Dennis D. Baldocchi is an American scientist and Distinguished Professor of Biometeorology, Emeritus, in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his contributions to the development of the eddy covariance technique, a method used to measure the continuous exchange of carbon dioxide, water vapour, and energy between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. He is also the co-founder of FLUXNET, an international network that coordinates flux measurements from hundreds of research sites across the globe.

Early life and education

Baldocchi grew up in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta region of California. His father was the owner and operator of a walnut and almond orchard, and this early exposure to agriculture and the natural environment shaped his interest in atmospheric science. He then attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he earned a Master of Science in Agricultural Engineering in 1979 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Bioenvironmental Engineering in 1982. He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Biometeorology in 2023 and served as Executive Associate Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources from 2022 to 2025, before transitioning to emeritus status in July 2025. Through FLUXNET and the related AmeriFlux programme, a shared database encompasses data from over 400 sites and more than 2,500 site-years, supporting global change research and the validation of land-surface and climate models.

Honours and awards

He received the Ambassador Award from the American Geophysical Union in 2024 and the Verner Suomi Technology Medal from the American Meteorological Society in 2025. In 2025, he held the Carl-Friedrich Gauss Professorship at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (elected 2007) and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (elected 2022).

Editorial roles

Baldocchi served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences from 2009 to 2014, and as a member of the editorial review board of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology from 1993 to 2025.