Yude Pan

Yude Pan is a senior research scientist with the Climate, Fire, and Carbon Cycle Sciences group of the Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, and a senior investigator of the Harvard Forest at Harvard University. She then went on to receive a Master of Science in Quantitative Plant Ecology from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1985. She is also a member of the Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on Biodiversity, Forest Management and REDD+ and a member of the CPF (The Collaborative Partnership on Forests) of the United Nations. While it has long been understood that forests are a large terrestrial carbon sink, this study found that “global forests have annually removed 2.4 billion tons of carbon which absorbs 8.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, about one-third of fossil fuel emissions annually for the period of 1990-2007.” This study also emphasizes the importance of not passively relying on forests to absorb about ⅓ of fossil fuel emissions annually because current trends in forest treatment like deforestation and fires decrease forests ability to absorb carbon dioxide. In 2016 she was awarded the Chief's Distinguished Science Award from the USDA Forest Service She was also awarded the Director's Distinguished Science Award from the Northern Research Station at the USDA Forest Service in 2015. and by USFS Climate Change Research Grants.

“Tree mortality from drought, insects, and their interactions in a changing climate”, 2015, New Phytol

“Age structure and disturbance legacy of North American forests”, 2011, Biogeosciences

“Increasing Net Primary Production in China from 1982 to 1999”, 2003, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment