I will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at The University of British Columbia in January 2025. Please get in touch if you're interested in working with me at UBC as a graduate student (Masters or PhD)! My lab will investigate air quality, public health, and climate-related issues with a central focus on fires. Please see the lab website or this page for more information.
Tianjia (Tina) Liu is currently a NOAA Climate and Global Change (C&GC) postdoctoral fellow working with Prof. James Randerson in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her current research focuses on mapping the satellite-derived progression of wildfires in the western United States, investigating the climate and active fire suppression controls on fire spread, and quantifying related air quality and public health impacts. Broadly, Tina uses a combination of remote sensing, GIS, statistics/machine learning, and atmospheric modeling to understand modern human-fire relationships, the role of fire in the Earth system, and the impacts of extreme events on planetary health. She loves data visualization with geospatial data, such as with Google Earth Engine Apps, and wrangling code to explore all kinds of data from satellites, aircraft, ground monitors, models, and surveys/reports. During her Ph.D. in the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group at Harvard University, Tina's research focused on 1) investigating trends in the timing and magnitude of crop residue burning in northwestern India, as well as the drivers and air quality consequences of these shifts; 2) quantifying smoke exposure and public health impacts associated with fire emissions in Indonesia; and 3) assessing satellite-derived, fire-related smoke across North America. In her spare time, Tina enjoys poetry, photography, TV/movie/game soundtracks, basketball, board games, and crime dramas/docuseries.
Conferences/Events
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2024
December 9, 2024 at Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.
I will present a talk on "Building a modeling framework to untangle the influence of suppression on wildfire growth in California" on Monday morning (9:45-9:55 AM), December 9 (abstract, profile).
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
October 8, 2024 in La Jolla, CA
I presented a talk on "Building a data-driven framework for modeling large wildfire growth: Mapping fire progression and understanding the role of suppression and other drivers of fire spread" for the Scripps Climate and Atmosphere Seminar Series.
CUHK, SUSTech, and NUIST
September 16-23, 2024 in Hong Kong; Shenzhen and Nanjing, China
I presented a talk on "Fires and Society: Connections to Air Quality, Public Health, and Land Use and Management: Excerpts from India, Equatorial Asia, and North America" at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST).
Spatial Informatics Group Webinar Series
September 13, 2024 (virtual)
I presented a talk on "The SMOKE Policy Tool: Scientific framework for evaluating public health impacts from fires" for the webinar series hosted by the Spatial Informatics Group (SIG) on "Lessons learned on Wildfire Risk Mapping, Integrated Fire Management Systems and Value Chain Assessments from Northern Thailand (and Globally)."
Papers/Writing
The Washington Post highlights our research on agricultural fires and air pollution in north India
November 22, 2024
Our research on agricultural fires and air pollution in north India over the past few years is highlighted in an article in The Washington Post by Karishma Mehrotra. Check it out here! Related papers include Liu et al. (2022, JGR: Atmos.), Liu et al. (2021, ERL), Liu et al. (2020, Atmos. Environ. X), Liu et al. (2018, Atmos. Environ.), Cusworth et al. (2018, ERL) Lan et al. (2022, Nat. Commun.), and Gautam et al. (2023, GRL).
A Guide for Applying to Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Positions
October 10, 2024
Makoto Kelp and I, along with Minghao Qiu, and Dien Wu, wrote a comprehensive guide on applying to tenure-track Assistant Professor positions, mainly for Earth and Environmental Sciences. Yun Hang recently contributed some perspectives for Environmental Health positions. Check it out here!
Is the smoke aloft? Caveats regarding the use of the Hazard Mapping System (HMS) smoke product as a proxy for surface smoke presence across the United States
October 2, 2024
Our paper is published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire (main + SI)! Check out my HMS Smoke Explorer for visualizing the HMS smoke and fire products.
Air pollution and blood pressure: Evidence from Indonesia
July 2, 2024
Jaime Madrigano's paper is published in GeoHealth (main + SI)!