Staff Profile:Dr Raquel Garcia Gonzalez

Name:

Dr Raquel Garcia Gonzalez

Job Title:

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Responsibilities:

Areas of Interest:

Raquel's main research interest focuses on the use of Land Surface Models (LSM) in combination with measurements to study soil-vegetation-environment interactions. She is also interested in the applications of LSM for the assessment of climate change impacts (water, drought, energy) and the CO₂ mitigation potential of renewable energy sources.

Her current focus is the improvement of the description of soil physical processes in the UK Met Office-JULES model and the research project - Mitigation potential of horizontal ground coupled heat pumps.

Research groups / Centres:

• Earth Systems Science Research Group
• Soil Research Centre
• affiliated to NCAS Climate Land Surface Modelling Group
• DesertNet International

Key facts:

Raquel joined the department in May 2009. She completed her PhD on drought stress on the atmospheric exchange of CO₂ and distribution of production in Mediterranean ecosystems in 2009 at the Universite Paris Sud XI (Paris).

Publications:

García, R., A. Verhoef, P. L. Vidale and I. Braud (2012). Incorporation of water vapour flux in the JULES Land Surface Model: implications for key soil variables and land surface fluxes. Water Resources Research: doi:10.1029/2011WR011811.

García, R., A. Verhoef, P. L. Vidale, B. Main, G. Gan and Y. Wu (2012). Interactions between soil environment and a horizontal ground source heat pump for a domestic site in the UK. Renewable Energy, 44: 141:153.

Wu. Y., G. Gan, R. Garcia, A. Verhoef and P.L. Vidale (2011). Prediction of the thermal performance of Horizontal-coupled Ground Source Heat Exchangers. International Journal of Low Carbon Technologies, 6(4), 261-269.

García Gonzalez R., Verhoef A., Vidale P.L. and Braud I. (2010) Modelling Soil Heat and Water Flow as a Coupled Process in Land Surface Models. Geophysical Research Abstracts.

García Gonzalez R., Verhoef A., Vidale P.L, Gan G., Wu Y., Hughes A., Mansour M., Blyth E., Finch J. and Main B. (2010) Mitigation potential of horizontal ground coupled heat pumps for current and future climatic conditions: UK environmental modelling and monitoring studies. Geophysical Research Abstracts.

Wu Y., Gan G., Verhoef A., Vidale P.L., Garcia R. (2010) Experimental measurement and numerical simulation of horizontal-coupled Slinky Ground Source Heat Exchangers, Applied Thermal Engineering, In Press, ISSN 1359-4311, DOI: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2010.07.008.

T. Keenan, R. Garcia, A.D. Friend, S. Zaehle, C. Gracia, and S. Sabaté. (2009) Improved understanding of drought controls on seasonal variation in Mediterranean forest canopy CO₂ and water fluxes through combined in situ measurements and ecosystem modelling. Biogeosciences, 6, 1423-1444.

García, R., Keenan, T., Zaehle, S., Friend, A., Gracia, C., Sabaté, S. (2008) Ecophysiological responses to drought in Mediterranean forest ecosystems: data analysis and the evaluation of model predictions in drought prone environments, Geophysical Research Abstracts, 10: 6420.

Keenan, T., García, R., Sabaté, S. and Gracia, C.A. (2007) Process based Forest Modelling: A thorough validation and future prospects for Mediterranean Forest in a changing World. Actas de la II Reunión sobre modelización Forestal.

Qualifications:

MSc (Madrid, Spain); PhD (Paris Sud XI, France)