Rommel Zulueta

Rommel currently leads the NEON Assignable Assets Program and is still involved with the Instrumented Systems group. He is a micrometeorologist whose research included studying ecosystem fluxes across arctic tundra, boreal forest, agricultural, and desert ecosystems using tower- and aircraft-based eddy covariance. His doctoral research focused on assessing regional scale fluxes of mass, momentum, and energy from various ecosystems using small environmental research aircraft (SERA) and was the chief pilot and scientist for San Diego State University’s Sky Arrow 650TCN Environmental Research Aircraft (ERA). Rommel was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alaska Anchorage studying nutrient and carbon fluxes in glacier-dominated regions of south-central Alaska.

His research interests include trace-gas and energy fluxes across natural ecosystems, scaling ecosystem fluxes from landscape to region, ecosystem responses to changing climate, and SERA-based measurements and technologies. Rommel holds a B.S. in Biology from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Joint Doctoral Program in Ecology at the University of California Davis and San Diego State University. Rommel began working at NEON in 2013 while the Observatory was still under construction. During the construction phase, his work involved interfacing with the Science, Engineering, and Construction teams on the scientific requirements for the instrumentation and measurements of the Terrestrial Instrument Systems (TIS). His work also involved working with the Construction team prior to each site being built to ensure that construction of the infrastructure and construction activities would have minimal impacts to the site and have minimal effects on the measurements. Rommel was also the lead author of many of the Preventive Maintenance Procedures for the TIS sensors.

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