Dario Papale his Associate Professor of Remote Sensing and Modeling in Forestry at the University of
Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy) were he also got his PhD in Forest Ecology in 2003 working on artificial neural
networks and eddy covariance data. His interests are in data-model integrations, biogeochemical empirical
and data oriented models to assess carbon, water and energy fluxes from terrestrial ecosystems and their
uncertainty. From 2004 he is scientific responsible of the European Eddy Covariance fluxes databases
cluster (former ecosystem component database of the CarboEurope-IP project) where he mainly work in the
eddy covariance data standardization, quality control and uncertainty estimation, data policy and database
services development. His interest is also focused on the use of carbon and energy fluxes in the context of
empirical modeling and data mining in particular jointly with others data sources such remotely sensed data.
In this framework he is also responsible of the Airborne Remote Sensing Laboratory where new sensors and
methodologies are developed for airborne multispectral remote sensing applications in environmental studies
and monitoring.
In the last years his main activity and interest has been the development and coherent growth of the global
network of eddy covariance sites (FLUXNET). In this context, he was one of the organizer and member of
the Steering Committee of the LaThuile FLUXNET synthesis activity where fluxes measured using the eddy
covariance technique in more than 250 sites worldwide were standardized, processed and made available to
the scientific community. Since then, he continued to work on the development of new methods and
techniques to enhance the quality of the eddy covariance measurements in particular in Europe and US. He
is member of the AmeriFlux Management Project Team and he has been nominated in 2013 Director of the
Ecosystem Thematic Center of the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) ESFRI Research
Infrastructure in Europe.
Involved in several European and Italian research projects with responsibility roles, he is Executive Board
member and WP leader in the ICOS-Inwire EU-FP7 project (link of the eddy covariance community to the
other scientific communities) and in the BACI EU-H2020 project (development of new satellite based
ecological indexes). He also participate to the ENVRIPLUS EU-H2020 project where all the European
Environmental Infrastructures are coordinated and harmonized, and the COOPEUS EU-FP7 project that has
the aim to reduce the gaps in data sharing and harmonization between Europe and USA.
He published more than 70 papers in international journals (H factor = 33) and he is co-editor of a book on
the Eddy Covariance technique. Since August 2014 he is Editorial Board member of Nature Scientific Data.
Since 2010 he teaches “Remote sensing and modeling in forestry” (English course since 2013) at the
Environmental and Forestry Sciences master course and MEDFOR Erasmus Mundus course in Viterbo. He
supervises three PhD students, three master students and six post-docs.