Lei Zhang (张磊) PhD Candidate School of Geography and Ocean Science Nanjing University 163 Xianlin Road, Qixia District, Nanjing 210023, China Guest researcher at Soil Geography and Landscape Group Wageningen University & Research Email：lei.zhang.geo@outlook.com; zhanglei@smail.nju.edu.cn

[ Research Interests / Publications / Codes / Honors & Awards ]

Research Interests

• The spatiotemporal variations and linkages in aboveground vegetation growth and belowground soil carbon under the impacts of climate change and human activities

• Modelling geographic variables in space and time by integrating knowledge-guided process-oriented models and data-driven machine learning models

• Keywords:
  • Geoscience, Remote sensing, GIScience
  • Vegetation and Soil, Soil organic carbon, Interactions between vegetation, soil, climate change, and human activities
  • Space and time, Geostatistics, Spatial predictive model, Digital soil mapping, Spatial sampling method
  • Machine learning, Deep learning

Publications

• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aCKgi18AAAAJ&hl=en
• Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lei-Zhang-360
• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1090-6338

As first/corresponding author:

• Zhang, L. et al. Global patterns and controls of top- and subsoil organic carbon turnover times (in prep.)

• Zhang, L., Heuvelink, G.B.M., Mulder, V.L., Chen, S., Deng, X., Yang, L., 2024. Using process-oriented model output to enhance machine learning-based soil organic carbon prediction in space and time. Science of The Total Environment 922, 170778. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170778 [Web] [PDF]

• Zhang, L., Yang, L., Zohner, C.M., Crowther, T.W., Li, M., Shen, F., Guo, M., Qin, J., Yao, L., Zhou, C., 2022. Direct and indirect impacts of urbanization on vegetation growth across the world’s cities. Science Advances 8, eabo0095. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo0095 [Web] [PDF]

• Zhang, L., Cai, Y., Huang, H., Li, A., Yang, L., Zhou, C., 2022. A CNN-LSTM model for soil organic carbon content prediction with long time series of MODIS-based phenological variables. Remote Sensing 14, 4441. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14184441 [Web] [PDF]

• Zhang, L., Zhu, A.-X., Liu, J., Ma, T., Yang, L., Zhou, C., 2023. An adaptive uncertainty-guided sampling method for geospatial prediction and its application in digital soil mapping. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 37, 476–498. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2022.2125973 [Web] [PDF]

• Zhang, L., Yang, L., Cai, Y., Huang, H., Shi, J., Zhou, C., 2022. A multiple soil properties oriented representative sampling strategy for digital soil mapping. Geoderma 406, 115531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2021.115531 [Web] [PDF]

• Zhang, L., Yang, L., Ma, T., Shen, F., Cai, Y., Zhou, C., 2021. A self-training semi-supervised machine learning method for predictive mapping of soil classes with limited sample data. Geoderma 384, 114809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114809 [Web] [PDF]

• Zhang, L., Na, J., Zhu, J., Shi, Z., Zou, C., Yang, L., 2021. Spatiotemporal causal convolutional network for forecasting hourly PM2.5 concentrations in Beijing, China. Computers & Geosciences 155, 104869. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2021.104869 [Web] [PDF]

• 张磊, 朱阿兴, 杨琳, 秦承志, 刘军志, 刘雪琦, 2017. 基于分融策略的土壤采样设计方法. 土壤学报 54, 1079–1090. https://doi.org/10.11766/trxb201701030562 [Web] [PDF]

As co-author:

• Pu, Y., Yang, L., Zhang, L., Huang, H., Zhang, G., Zhou, C., 2024. Major contributions of agricultural management practices to topsoil organic carbon distribution and accumulation in croplands of East China over three decades. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 359, 108749. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2023.108749 [Web] [PDF]

• Li Anqi, Yang Lin, Cai Yanyan, Zhang Lei, Huang Haili, Wu Qi, Wang Wenqi. Digital mapping of soil fertility attributes in croplands in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai based on recursive feature elimination-random forest model. SCIENTIA GEOGRAPHICA SINICA, 2024, 44(1): 168-178. https://doi.org/10.13249/j.cnki.sgs.20220131 [Web] [PDF]

• Yang, C., Yang, L., Zhang, L., Zhou, C., 2023. Soil organic matter mapping using INLA-SPDE with remote sensing based soil moisture indices and Fourier transforms decomposed variables. Geoderma 437, 116571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2023.116571 [Web] [PDF]

• Shen, F., Yang, L., Zhang, L., Guo, M., Huang, H., Zhou, C., 2023. Quantifying the direct effects of long-term dynamic land use intensity on vegetation change and its interacted effects with economic development and climate change in jiangsu, China. Journal of Environmental Management 325, 116562. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116562 [Web] [PDF]

• Huang, H., Yang, L., Zhang, L., Pu, Y., Yang, C., Wu, Q., Cai, Y., Shen, F., Zhou, C., 2022. A review on digital mapping of soil carbon in cropland: progress, challenge, and prospect. Environmental Research Letters 17, 123004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aca41e [Web] [PDF]

• Wu, Q., Miao, S., Huang, H., Guo, M., Zhang, L., Yang, L., Zhou, C., 2022. Quantitative Analysis on Coastline Changes of Yangtze River Delta based on High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing Images. Remote Sensing 14, 310. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14020310 [Web] [PDF]

• Guo, M., Yang, L., Shen, F., Zhang, L., Li, A., Cai, Y., Zhou, C., 2022. Impact of socio-economic environment and its interaction on the initial spread of COVID-19 in mainland China. Geospatial Health 17. https://doi.org/10.4081/gh.2022.1060 [Web] [PDF]

• Yang, L., Shen, F., Zhang, L., Cai, Y., Yi, F., Zhou, C., 2021. Quantifying influences of natural and anthropogenic factors on vegetation changes using structural equation modeling: A case study in Jiangsu Province, China. Journal of Cleaner Production 280, 124330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124330 [Web] [PDF]

• Yang, L., Cai, Y., Zhang, L., Guo, M., Li, A., Zhou, C., 2021. A deep learning method to predict soil organic carbon content at a regional scale using satellite-based phenology variables. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 102, 102428. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102428 [Web] [PDF]

• Yang, L., Li, X., Yang, Q., Zhang, L., Zhang, S., Wu, S., Zhou, C., 2021. Extracting knowledge from legacy maps to delineate eco-geographical regions. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 35, 250–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658816.2020.1806284 [Web] [PDF]

• He, X., Yang, L., Li, A., Zhang, L., Shen, F., Cai, Y., Zhou, C., 2021. Soil organic carbon prediction using phenological parameters and remote sensing variables generated from Sentinel-2 images. CATENA 205, 105442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2021.105442 [Web] [PDF]

• Ma, T., Brus, D.J., Zhu, A.-X., Zhang, L., Scholten, T., 2020. Comparison of conditioned Latin hypercube and feature space coverage sampling for predicting soil classes using simulation from soil maps. Geoderma 370, 114366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114366 [Web] [PDF]

Codes

• Global patterns of top- and subsoil organic carbon turnover times
  Global Soil Carbon Turnover Time <Code>

• Direct and indirect impacts of urbanization on vegetation growth across the world’s cities
  Global urban vegetation analysis <Code>

• A CNN-LSTM model for soil organic carbon content prediction using phenological variables
  A CNN-LSTM model for SOC preditive mapping <Code>

• An Adaptive uncertainty-guided sampling (AUGSS) method for geospatial prediction and its application in digital soil mapping
  Uncertainty-guided sampling method <Code>

• Spatiotemporal causal convolutional network for predicting air pullution (PM2.5) concentrations
  ST-CausalConvNet <Code>

Honors & Awards

• Awarded as a guest researcher at Wageningen University & Research (Soil Geography and Landscape Group) funded by the China Scholarship Council, 2022-2023.

• Awarded as Promising Young Scholar in GIS at the 10th GIS Forum for Colleges and Universities, 2022.

• National scholarship for Ph.D. students, awarded by Chinese Ministry of Education, 2022. Nanjing University, China.

• First Prize in Best Paper Award in conference of graduate students of geographic information science in Jiangsu, China, 2017. Awarded by Geographical Society of China.

• First Prize in Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award of Jiangsu province in China, 2016. Awarded by the Ministry of Education.

• Global GIS Young Scholar Award (Jack Dangermond’s special award), in San Diego, USA, 2015 (No. 11 in: Link)

• First Prize in the ESRI GIS Spatial Analysis Contest in China (team leader), 2014. Awarded by ESRI and Geographical Society of China