Work

Field campaigns, grants, papers, data, and talks. Theme essays are on Projects. Bios are on People.

Field

Temperate Rainforest Geoecology. Yellow-cedar decline plots on west Chichagof Island, Tongass National Forest (Sheet’ká Kwáan territory). 2026 eddy-covariance at S Douglas fen near Juneau (CSAT+7200; USFS). Jessica Murray and Aaron MacDonald.

Chicago Soil Biogeochemistry. Nachusa Grasslands (Dixon, IL); UIC James Woodworth Prairie (JWP); Chicago CROCUS urban soils; Urban Growers Collective / PRL urban-agriculture GHG plots; Green Era Campus.

Methane Fluxes Across Scales. FLUXNET-CH4 / UpCH4 synthesis; ATMOS / AmeriFlux site US-AMS; ESIIL AI for Natural Methane working group.

Grants

Years Role Title Agency ID Link
2024–2027 PI Effects of Yellow Cypress Decline on Coastal Temperate Rainforest Climate Interactions DOE BER ESS ESS 2024 awards
2026– PI Impact of ecohydrology on persistence and differentiation of declining yellow-cedar stands USDA Forest Service 26-JV-11261934-032
2021–2025 Co-PI Prototyping a monitoring system of global wetland CH4 emissions with machine learning and satellite remote sensing NASA CMS NNH20ZDA001N CMS project
2024–2027 Co-PI Building Equitable University-Community Geoscience Research Collaborations on Chicago’s South Side NSF 2326749 Award Search
2022– UIC participant Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS) DOE Urban IFL (Argonne-led) UIC Today
2022– Working-group Co-PI AI for Natural Methane: Harmonizing Natural Methane Datasets using Knowledge Guided Machine Learning NSF ESIIL ESIIL
2022–2025 PI Friends of Nachusa Grasslands scientific research grants Friends of Nachusa Grasslands 2022 · 2023 · 2024 · 2025
2022– Student award (Yonker) UIC Sustainability Fee (transparent photosynthesis chambers) UIC

Awards

  • Aaron MacDonald — NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention, 2026.
  • Jessica Murray — UIC Postdoc Travel Award, 2026.
  • Nicholas Fedchuk — UIC Honors College Research Grant, Spring 2026.
  • Junior Jules Francois — Jean Bogner Travel Fund, 2026.
  • Gavin McNicol — UIC Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program, 2025 (EAES 480 Statistical Methods in Earth and Environmental Sciences).
  • Michael Yonker — NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Gavin McNicol — UIC Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program, 2022 (EaES 494 Statistical Methods in EaES).
  • Otto Briner — AsiaFlux 2022 Best Poster, 2nd place (“Supporting inclusive growth of methane flux data and community in AsiaFlux”).
  • Otto Briner — AGU Michael H. Freilich Student Visualization Grand Prize, December 2022 (NASA Hyperwall talk “UpCH4: Global Freshwater Wetland Emissions,” 14 December 2022).

Papers

Grouped with the Projects themes, newest first. Full list on Google Scholar and ORCID.

Methane Fluxes Across Scales

  • McNicol, G., Yonker, M., Breiter, J., Pugh, S., & Meyer-Dombard, D. R. (2026). Strong growing season soil methane uptake observed in a restored prairie-savanna. Frontiers in Environmental Science 14: 1931059. doi:10.3389/fenvs.2026.1931059

  • Oh, Y., et al., including McNicol, G. (2026). Revising the magnitude and trends of the global methane soil sink with process-based, machine-learning approaches. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. doi:10.1029/2025JG009668

  • Li, F., Zhu, Q., Liu, L., et al., including McNicol, G. (2026). Multi-decadal dynamics of wetland methane emissions revealed by knowledge-guided machine learning. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.70899

  • Määttä, T., Desai, A. R., Ueyama, M., et al., including McNicol, G. (2026). A cross-site comparison of ecosystem- and plot-scale methane fluxes across multiple timescales. Biogeosciences 23: 4379–4445. bg.copernicus.org

  • McNicol, G., et al. (2023). Upscaling wetland methane emissions from the FLUXNET-CH4 eddy covariance network (UpCH4 v1.0): Model development, network assessment, and budget comparison. AGU Advances. doi:10.1029/2023AV000956

  • Delwiche, K. B., Knox, S. H., Malhotra, A., Fluet-Chouinard, E., McNicol, G., et al. (2021). FLUXNET-CH4: A global, multi-ecosystem dataset and analysis of methane seasonality from freshwater wetlands. Earth System Science Data. doi:10.5194/essd-13-3607-2021

  • Knox, S. H., Bansal, S., McNicol, G., et al. (2021). Identifying dominant environmental predictors of freshwater wetland methane fluxes across diurnal to seasonal time scales. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.15661

  • McNicol, G., Knox, S., Guilderson, T., Baldocchi, D. D., & Silver, W. L. (2020). Where old meets new: An ecosystem study of methanogenesis in a reflooded agricultural peatland. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.14916

  • Yang, W. H., McNicol, G., Teh, Y. A., Estera, K., Wood, T. E., & Silver, W. L. (2017). Evaluating the classical versus an emerging conceptual model of peatland methane dynamics. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. doi:10.1002/2017GB005622

  • McNicol, G., Sturtevant, C., Knox, S., Dronova, I., Baldocchi, D. D., & Silver, W. L. (2017). Effects of seasonality, transport pathway, and spatial structure on greenhouse gas fluxes in a restored wetland. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.13580

Temperate Rainforest Geoecology

  • McNicol, G., et al. (2023). Small, coastal temperate rainforest watersheds dominate dissolved organic carbon transport to the Northeast Pacific Ocean. Geophysical Research Letters. doi:10.1029/2023GL103024
  • Lawrence, C. R., et al., including McNicol, G. (2020). An open-source database for the synthesis of soil radiocarbon data: International Soil Radiocarbon Database (ISRaD) version 1.0. Earth System Science Data. doi:10.5194/essd-12-61-2020
  • McNicol, G., et al. (2019). Large, climate-sensitive soil carbon stocks mapped with pedology-informed machine learning in the North Pacific coastal temperate rainforest. Environmental Research Letters. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aaed52

Chicago Soil Biogeochemistry

  • Lee, J., Berkelhammer, M., Vincent, A. E. S., Grover, M., Cho, A., Packman, A. I., Kaludi, B., Gonzalez-Meler, M., & McNicol, G. (2026). Quality assessment and control of urban environmental sensors using physical thresholding and machine learning-based probabilities. Big Earth Data. doi:10.1080/20964471.2026.2623720
  • McNicol, G., Jeliazovski, J., François, J. J., Kramer, S., & Ryals, R. (2020). Climate change mitigation potential in sanitation via off-site composting of human waste. Nature Climate Change 10: 545–549. doi:10.1038/s41558-020-0782-4

Data

  • UpCH4 v1.0 — monthly gridded freshwater wetland CH4, 2001–2018. ORNL DAAC 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2253. Also listed on NASA Open Data.
  • FLUXNET-CH4 — global multi-ecosystem methane flux dataset (Delwiche et al. 2021).
  • ISRaD — International Soil Radiocarbon Database v1.0 (Lawrence et al. 2020).
  • AI4NM — CyVerse dataset.
  • AmeriFlux US-AMS — half-hourly gap-filled methane and energy fluxes.
  • Nachusa microbes — NCBI BioSample accessions beginning SAMN61436570.

Talks and meetings

  • McNicol, G. Designing FLUXNET-CH4 2.0: Methane flux data and community to advance global methane cycle science. Invited keynote, AsiaFlux 2022, 20 September 2022.
  • Briner, O., & McNicol, G. Supporting inclusive growth of methane flux data and community in AsiaFlux. Poster, AsiaFlux 2022, 22 September 2022.
  • McNicol, G. FLUXNET-CH4 Synthesis Activity: Data-driven modeling of wetland methane fluxes from sites to the globe. Invited seminar, UW–Madison CPEP, 6 December 2022.
  • McNicol, G. Building FLUXNET-CH4 2.0. Poster, AGU 2022, session INV22C, 13 December 2022.
  • Briner, O., & McNicol, G. Informing the inclusive growth of FLUXNET-CH4. Poster, AGU 2022, session INV22C, 13 December 2022.
  • Briner, O. UpCH4: Global Freshwater Wetland Emissions. NASA Hyperwall, 14 December 2022.
  • Zhu, Q., Yuan, K., Chen, M., & McNicol, G. NASA CMS poster. PDF.
  • Fee, R. Historical survey data on native prairie plant biodiversity. Poster, Wild Things! Conference, Rosemont, IL, 25 February 2023.
  • Yonker, M. Honors College capstone poster, 18 April 2023.
  • Yonker, M., Breiter, J., et al. Nachusa Grasslands science symposium, 22 April 2023.
  • Fee, R. UIC Sustainability Internship Symposium poster, 25 April 2023.
  • Yonker, M. Developing an Arduino-based chamber system (ABCS) to measure net ecosystem exchange and component fluxes of carbon dioxide over short canopies. AGU 2024, 9 December 2024.
  • McNicol, G., et al. Globally upscaled products of natural methane fluxes can be better evaluated and interpreted using regional-scale constituency analyses. AGU 2024, 10 December 2024.
  • Ee, J. S. (Ivan), & Williams, M. An urban soil survey to map soil texture and drainage properties across Chicago. AGU 2024, 12 December 2024.
  • Francois, J. Effects of micro-topographic zones on soil greenhouse gas fluxes and depth profile properties in a remnant tall grass prairie. AGU 2024, 12 December 2024.
  • McNicol, G. Session chair, B51D Methane Emission Feedbacks from Natural Systems: Reducing Uncertainties from the Tropics to the Poles I Oral. AGU 2024, 13 December 2024.
  • Francois, J. J., Allen, E., Lov, B., McNicol, G., Berkelhammer, M., & Brier, J. Equitable urban community research to quantify crop yield and biogeochemical benefits of soil organic amendments. Invited oral, ESA 2026 OOS 14, Salt Lake City, 28 July 2026 (session Justice and Equity in Ecology: Envisioning a More Just Ecological Future).
  • McNicol, G., Chen, S., Liu, L., Malone, S., Malhotra, A., Rozmiarek, K., Oh, Y., Zheng, J., Zhu, Q., and the ESIIL AI for Natural Methane Working Group. Road-mapping and enabling ecosystem to planetary scale methane science and models. Organized oral, ESA 2026 OOS 12, Salt Lake City, 28 July 2026 (session Environmental Data Science Advances from ESIIL Working Groups).
  • McNicol, G. Invited plenary on methane fluxes. AmeriFlux Annual Meeting 2026, Berkeley, CA, 9–11 September 2026.

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