Clayton Elder

Affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)

Branch: Biospheric Science (SGE)

Professional Biography

Clayton D. Elder, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist in the Biospheric Science Branch at Ames and one of two center coordinators for NASA’s Disasters Response Coordination System. He earned his doctorate in Earth System Science from the University of California Irvine in 2018 using rare carbon isotopes to investigate the sources and magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions on large spatial scales in Arctic lakes. Following a NASA postdoctoral fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he continued his study of the Arctic as a scientist at the same location. Clayton uses hyperspectral airborne imaging spectroscopy to detect and elucidate environmental patterns of ecological methane emission hotspots across regions of the North American Arctic. Clayton is an active investigator and collaborator on multiple projects within Phase I, II, and now Phase III of NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). 

Education

PhD Earth System Science, University of California Irvine

MS Earth System Science, University of California Irvine

BS Environmental Science, Oklahoma State University

Research Interests

• Using isotopes to investigate the origins of methane and carbon dioxide emissions from permafrost regions

• Aircraft remote sensing of Boreal and Arctic methane emissions

• Merging the scales of in-situ observations with high resolution remote sensing datasets to constrain complex ecological processes in the Arctic

Awards/Honors

• NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship (2017)
• Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Fellowship (2014)

Select Publications

Elder, C.D., Thompson, D.R., Thorpe, A.K., H. Chandanpurkar, Hanke, P.J., Hasson, N., James, S., Minsley, B., Pastick, N., D. Olefeldt, Walter Anthony, K.M., Miller, C.E. (2021). Characterizing methane emission hotspots from thawing permafrost. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 35(12), e2020GB006922.

Baskaran, L., Elder, C., Bloom, A. A., Ma, S., Thompson, D., & Miller, C. E. (2021). Geomorphological patterns of remotely sensed methane hot spots in the Mackenzie Delta, Canada. Environmental Research Letters (In Press).

Miner, K.M., Turetsky, M., Fernandez-Prieto, D., Bartsch, A., Tamminen, J., Fix, A., Sweeney, C., Malina, E., Elder, C.D., Miller, C.E. Dynamic Permafrost Carbon in the New Arctic. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (Accepted).

Schimel, D., Schneider, F., Bloom, A., Bowman, K., Cawse-Nicholson, K., Elder, C.D., Ferraz, A., Fisher, J., Hulley, G., Liu, J., Magney, T., Meyer, V., Miller C.E., Parazoo, N., Pavlick, R., Podest, E., Saatchi, S., Stavros, N., Keller, M., Townsend, P., Zheng, T. (2019). Flux towers in the sky: global ecology from space. New Phytologist.

Elder, C. D., Thompson, D. R., Thorpe, A. K., Hanke, P., Walter Anthony, K. M., & Miller, C. E. (2020). Airborne Mapping Reveals Emergent Power Law of Arctic Methane Emissions. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(3), e2019GL085707.

Elder, C. D., Schweiger, M., Lam, B., Crook, E. D., Xu, X., Walker, J., … & Czimczik, C. I. (2019). Seasonal Sources of Whole‐Lake CH4 and CO2 Emissions From Interior Alaskan Thermokarst Lakes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 124(5), 1209-1229.

Elder, C. D., Xu, X., Walker, J., Schnell, J. L., Hinkel, K. M., Townsend-Small, A., … & Czimczik, C. I. (2018). Greenhouse gas emissions from diverse Arctic Alaskan lakes are dominated by young carbon. Nature Climate Change, 8(2), 166-171.

Ying, Q., Poulter, B., Watts, J.D., Arndt, K.A., Virkkala, A.M., Bruhwiler, L., Oh, Y., Rogers, B.M., Natali, S.M., Sullivan, H., Schiferl, L.D., Elder, C., Peltola, O., et al. 2024. WetCH 4: A Machine Learning-based Upscaling of Methane Fluxes of Northern Wetlands during 2016–2022. Earth System Science Data Discussions, 2024, pp.1-45. https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-84/

Thorpe, A.K., Green, R.O., Thompson, D.R., Brodrick, P.G., Chapman, J.W., Elder, C.D., Irakulis-Loitxate, I., Cusworth, D.H., Ayasse, A.K., Duren, R.M. and Frankenberg, C., 2023. Attribution of individual methane and carbon dioxide emission sources using EMIT observations from space. Science advances, 9(46), p.eadh2391. https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adh2391

Garcia-Tigreros, F., Elder, C.D., Kurek, M.R., Miller, B.L., Xu, X., Wickland, K.P., Czimczik, C.I., Dornblaser, M.M., Striegl, R.G., Kyzivat, E.D. and Smith, L.C., 2023. Arctic-boreal lakes of interior Alaska dominated by contemporary carbon. Environmental Research Letters, 18(12), p.124024. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0993

Yoseph, E., Hoy, E., Elder, C.D., Ludwig, S.M., Thompson, D.R. and Miller, C.E., 2023. Tundra fire increases the likelihood of methane hotspot formation in the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska, USA. Environmental Research Letters, 18(10), p.104042. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acf50b

Clark, J.A., Tape, K.D., Baskaran, L., Elder, C., Miller, C., Miner, K., O’Donnell, J.A. and Jones, B.M., 2023. Do beaver ponds increase methane emissions along Arctic tundra streams?. Environmental Research Letters, 18(7), p.075004. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acde8e

Mullen, A.L., Watts, J.D., Rogers, B.M., Carroll, M.L., Elder, C.D., Noomah, J., Williams, Z., Caraballo‐Vega, J.A., Bredder, A., Rickenbaugh, E. and Levenson, E., 2023. Using High‐Resolution Satellite Imagery and Deep Learning to Track Dynamic Seasonality in Small Water Bodies. Geophysical Research Letters, 50(7), p.e2022GL102327. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL102327

Baskaran, L., Elder, C., Bloom, A.A., Ma, S., Thompson, D. and Miller, C.E., 2022. Geomorphological patterns of remotely sensed methane hot spots in the Mackenzie Delta, Canada. Environmental Research Letters, 17(1), p.015009. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac41fb

Miner, K.R., Turetsky, M.R., Malina, E., Bartsch, A., Tamminen, J., McGuire, A.D., Fix, A., Sweeney, C., Elder, C.D. and Miller, C.E., 2022. Permafrost carbon emissions in a changing Arctic. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 3(1), pp.55-67. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-021-00230-3

Elder, C., Hasson, N., Hanke, P., Wright, S., Anthony, K.W., and C.E. Miller, 2021. Methane fluxes from shorelines and differing surfaces, big Trail Lake, Alaska, 2019, ORNL DAAC Data Publication, DOI: 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1870. https://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1870