CHEERS

Yanyan Cheng is an Assistant Professor and National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellow at the Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Her research is interdisciplinary, integrating socioeconomic and policy insights with climate and environmental science to develop cost-effective, climate-resilient, sustainability-enhancing, and nature-positive land-based climate solutions tailored to diverse local and regional contexts.

As an Earth system modeler and ecohydrologist, Yanyan investigates the complex interactions among land, water, carbon, energy, atmosphere, ecosystems, and human systems. Her Climate and Hydrology for Earth and Ecosystem Resilience and Sustainability (CHEERS) group combines Earth system models (e.g., Community Earth System Model [CESM], Energy Exascale Earth System Model [E3SM]), hydrological models, ecosystem demography models (e.g., the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator [FATES]), integrated assessment models (e.g., Global Change Analysis Model [GCAM]), field observations, remote sensing datasets, and modern optimization and ML/AI techniques to evaluate ecosystem services, resilience, robustness, and risks associated with diverse nature-based climate solutions, with the goal of unlocking land-based mitigation potential for climate adaptation, decarbonization, and sustainable development.