Matteo Detto

Education and Professional Experience:
  1. Qualification to the PhD in Hydraulic Engineering and Hydrology at the Politecnico di Milano, March 2003.

  2. Masters Degree in Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, June 2002;

    Thesis completed at the Department of Hydraulic, Environmental, Road and Surveying Engineering. Title: Infiltration and Run-off modelling on local and basic scales. Major Professor - Marco Mancini.

  1. 2003-present: Graduate research assistant, the Department of Hydraulic, Environmental, Road and Surveying Engineering (DIIAR), Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy working under the direction of Professors Marco Mancini and Renzo Rosso. Primary responsibilities included collection and maintenance of an eddy-covariance CO2/H2O tower in the Island of Sardinia (Italy) for the purposes of quantifying how hydrologic controls impact land surface fluxes of CO2, water, and sensible heat from Mediterranean ecosystems. Also, my responsibilities include maintaining a station in an irrigated rice field near Milan. Expected Graduation Date: May 30, 2006.
  2. 2004 - Visiting Scholar [3 months]: Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University. Working with professor Gabriel Katul on (i) formulating interfacial transfer theories that can be used to couple remotely sensed skin temperature with sensible heat flux in heterogeneous landscapes, and (ii) developing two-dimensional footprint models that can be used to interpret source weight functions in complex landscapes and that can be linked to QUICK-BIRD or IKONOS imagery.
  3. 2005 - Visiting Scholar [3 months]: Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University. Working with professor Gabriel Katul on (i) similarities between heat, water vapour, and CO2; (ii) flux-variance methods to predict fluxes in heterogeneous landscapes, (iii) density corrections to scalar statistics measurements collected with open path infrared gas analysers, (iv) conducting both numerical and field experiments on the structure of turbulence near forest edges (at one of the Duke Forest Ameriflux sites).
  4. 2006 - Visiting Scholar [2 months]: Smithsonian Institute, BCI, Panama; working with professors Joe Wright, Ran Nathan, Roni Avissar, and Gabriel Katul on multi-layer velocity measurements to quantify the structure of turbulence inside tropical forests for the purposes of modelling seed dispersal by wind (joint project between the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Duke University, and the Smithsonian Institute).
Research accomplishments at Duke University & Politecnico di Milano:
  1. Detto, M., N. Montaldo, J.D. Albertson, M. Mancini, and G. Katul, 2006, Soil moisture and vegetation controls on evapotranspiration in a heterogeneous Mediterranean ecosystem on Sardinia, Italy, Water Resources Research , VOL. 42, W08419, doi:10.1029/2005WR004693.
  2. Detto M., and G.G. Katul, 2007, Simplified expressions for adjusting higher-order turbulent statistics obtained from open path gas analyzers, Boundary Layer Meteorology, 122, 205-216.
  3. Juang J-Y, A. Porporato, P.C. Stoy, M.B.S. Siqueira, A.C. Oishi, M. Detto, H.S. Kim, and G.G. Katul, 2007, Hydrologic and atmospheric controls on convective precipitation events in a southeastern US mosaic landscape, Water Resources Research, W03421, doi:10.1029/2006WR004954.
  4. Detto, M., G.G. Katul, M. Siqueira, J.Y. Juang, and P. Stoy, 2008, The structure of turbulence near tall forest edge: The backward facing step flow analogy revisited, Ecological Applications, 18: 1420-1435.
  5. Detto, M., G.G. Katul, M. Mancini, N. Montaldo, J.D. Albertson, 2008, Surface heterogeneity and its signature in higher-order scalar similarity relationships, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 14: 902-916.
  6. Wright, J.S., A. Trakhtenbrot, G. Bohrer, M. Detto, G. G. Katul, N. Horvitz, H. C. Muller-Landau, F. A. Jonesa, and R. Nathan, 2008, Understanding strategies for seed dispersal by wind under contrasting atmospheric conditions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 19084-19089.