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Professor Peng is a broadly trained environmentalist with interdisciplinary expertise in land use and food sustainability, climate change, and water resources. Originally from Guangdong, she received her B.S. in Geosciences and B.A. in Philosophy from Peking University in 2013, and her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Princeton University in 2019. Before joining the University of Hong Kong (HKU), she served as Chief Modeler for the Food Programme at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., where she developed decision-support tools to guide carbon-neutral agriculture in Denmark and Africa.
At HKU, Professor Peng is a joint assistant professor at the Department of Geography and the Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality. She leads the Accounting and Policy for Land Use Sustainability (APLUS) research group, aiming to achieving food sustainability and providing solutions to mitigate the climate impacts of land use activities. She has published in high-impact journals including Nature, Nature Sustainability, Nature Geoscience, Nature Food, and Global Change Biology. Her current work involves developing carbon accounting models for forestry and agriculture to support global and national land use policy recommendations.
She is a Doris Zimmern Hong Kong University Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, an editorial board member of Communications Sustainability, and an Associate Editor of Environment, Development and Sustainability.
We are excited to announce an opportunity for a PhD to join our research team and invite qualified candidates to apply:
Research Interests
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Land use and carbon accounting
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Sustainable agriculture
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Forest carbon dynamics and conservation
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Evapotranspiration and drought monitoring
Selected Publications
Land use and carbon accounting
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Searchinger, T.D., Berry, S., & Peng, L., 2025. Reply to: Carbon implications of wood harvesting and forest management. Nature, 646, E20–E23. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09381-5.
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Luo, Y., Wei, N., Lu, X., Zhou, Y., Tao, F., Quan, Q., Liao, C., Jiang, L., Xia, J., Huang, Y., Niu, S., Xu, X., Sun, Y., Zeng, N., Koven, C., Peng, L., …, Cheng, L., & Houlton, B., 2025. Large CO₂ removal potential of woody debris preservation in managed forests. Nature Geoscience, 18, 675–681. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01731-2.
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Peng, L., Searchinger, T. D., Zionts, J., & Waite, R., 2023. The carbon costs of global wood harvests. Nature, 620(7972), 110-115. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06187-1.
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Searchinger, T. D., Peng, L., Zionts, J., & Waite, R., 2023. The Global Land Squeeze: Managing the Growing Competition for Land. World Resources Institute. https://doi.org/10.46830/wrirpt.20.00042.
Forest carbon dynamics
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Wang, D., Ziegler, A.D., Holden, J., Spracklen, D.V., Ciais, P., Peng, L., & Zeng, Z., 2025. Vegetation cover change as a growing driver of global leaf area index dynamics. Nature Communications, 16, 9259. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06187-1.
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Feng, Y., Zeng, Z., Searchinger, T. D., … Peng, L., … Wood, E. F., & Zheng, C., 2022. Doubling of annual forest carbon loss over the tropics during the early twenty-first century. Nature Sustainability, 5(5), 444–451. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00854-3.
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Zeng, Z., Wang, D., Yang, L., … Peng, L., …, Caylor, K., & Wood, E. F., 2021. Deforestation-induced warming over tropical mountain regions regulated by elevation. Nature Geoscience, 14(1), 23–29. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-00666-0.
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Chen, H., Zeng, Z., Wu, J., Peng, L., Lakshmi, V., Yang, H., & Liu, J., 2020. Large uncertainty on forest area change in the early 21st century among widely used global land cover datasets. Remote Sensing, 12(21), 3502. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12213502.
Sustainable agriculture
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Zhan, Y., Guo, Z., Podgorski, J., Zeng, Z., Xu, P., Peng, L., Chen, K., Wu, R., Ding, C., Andrews, C., Babovic, V., & Zheng, C., 2025. Changes in meat consumption can improve groundwater quality. Nature Food, 6(1), 703–714. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01188-x.
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Hadjikakou, M., Bowles, N. I., Geyik, O., Conijn, S. J. G., Mogollón, J. M., Bodirsky, B. L., Muller, A., Weindl, I., Moallemi, E. A., Shaikh, M. A., Damerau, K., Davis, K. F., Pfister, S., Springmann, M., Clark, M., Metson, G. S., Röös, E., Bajzelj, B., Graham, N. T., Wisser, D., Doelman, J. C., Deppermann, A., Theurl, M. C., Pradhan, P., Stevanović, M., Lauk, C., Chang, J., Heck, V., Ercin, E., Peng, L., …, Zhang, X., & Bryan, B. A., 2025. Ambitious food system interventions required to mitigate the risk of exceeding Earth’s environmental limits. One Earth, 8(7), 101351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101351.
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Attwood, S., Peng, L., Zeng, H., Blondin, S., & Fu, X., 2023. Opportunities To Achieve Healthy, Sustainable Food Choices in China Through Behavior Change. World Resources Institute. https://doi.org/10.46830/wrirpt.22.00012.
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Searchinger, T. D., Zionts, J., Peng, L., Wirsenius, S., Beringer, T., & Dumas, P., 2021. A Pathway to Carbon Neutral Agriculture in Denmark. World Resources Institute. https://doi.org/10.46830/wrirpt.20.00006.
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Wirsenius, S., T. Searchinger, T. D., Zionts, J., Peng, L., Beringer, T., & Dumas, P., 2020. Comparing the Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Dairy and Pork Systems Across Countries Using Land-Use Carbon Opportunity Costs. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/research/comparing-life-cycle-greenhouse-gas-emissions-dairy-and-pork-systems-across-countries.
Evapotranspiration and drought monitoring
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Peng, L., Sheffield, J., Wei, Z., Ek, M., & Wood, E. F., 2024. An enhanced Standardized Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) drought-monitoring method integrating land surface characteristics. Earth System Dynamics, 15, 1277-1300. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-1277-2024.
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Peng, L., Wei, Z., Zeng, Z., Lin, P., Wood, E. F., & Sheffield, J., 2021. Reducing solar radiation forcing uncertainty and its impact on surface energy and water fluxes. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 22(4), 813-829. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0052.1.
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Peng, L., Zeng, Z, Wei, Z., Chen, A., Wood, E. F., & Sheffield, J., 2019. Determinants of the ratio of actual to potential evapotranspiration. Global Change Biology, 25(4), 1326–1343. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14577.
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Peng, L., Li, D., & Sheffield, J., 2018. Drivers of variability in atmospheric evaporative demand: Multiscale spectral analysis based on observations and physically based modeling. Water Resources Research, 54(5), 3510-3529. https://doi.org/10.1029/2017WR022104.
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Zeng, Z.*, Peng, L.*, & Piao, S., 2018. Response of terrestrial evapotranspiration to Earth's greening. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 33, 9-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.03.001.