Jesus Marin Diaz

Jesus Marin Diaz’s research is centered on quantifying methane fluxes across tropical ecosystems, with particular emphasis on spatial upscaling, uncertainty quantification, and the integration of field measurements with statistical and ecological models. His work seeks to constrain methane budgets by addressing how fluxes vary across space, time, and ecosystem types, and by developing modeling frameworks that explicitly account for heterogeneity, measurement uncertainty, and scale dependence.

During his doctoral research, he has participated in multiple field campaigns across the Amazon basin, working in peatlands, wetlands, and forested floodplains in Peru and Costa Rica. These campaigns include repeated measurements across seasons and hydrological conditions, allowing him to assess how methane emissions and uptake vary under contrasting flooding regimes and vegetation structures. His field work spans soil, water, and vegetation based measurements, including methane fluxes from peat soils, inundated surfaces, and tree stems and palms, providing a multi compartment perspective on methane exchange.

A central theme of his research is the integration of biotic and abiotic components of the landscape, linking vegetation structure and physiology, soil and sediment geochemistry, microbial dynamics, and geomorphological context. More recently, his work has expanded toward tree scale modeling, including photogrammetric reconstruction of tree structure and the identification of stem microhabitats, to better understand how physical structure mediates microbial activity and gas exchange. Through this integrative framework, his research aims to identify dominant controls, scale dependent processes, and emergent patterns governing carbon dynamics in tropical ecosystems.

Building on his methane focused research, his work increasingly examines the role of hydrological variability, flooding dynamics, and river driven landscape processes in regulating methane production, transport, and oxidation. By linking methane fluxes to floodplain connectivity, sediment dynamics, and geomorphological context, his research aims to bridge biogeochemical processes with river and landscape dynamics, advancing a more integrated understanding of methane cycling in tropical ecosystems.