Dr. MacBean is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Department of Biology at Western University, where she leads the Carbon Cycle, Climate and Ecosystems (C3E) Lab. Her research addresses policy-relevant scientific questions related to the terrestrial biosphere response to climate change, rising CO2, and land use/cover change and management, spanning scales from ecosystems to the globe. One of her current research interests is on better understanding interactions between vegetation dynamics, carbon and water cycles in dryland ecosystems. Dr. MacBean is also a leading expert on using a wide range of field and satellite datasets within a data assimilation framework to test, develop, and constrain land surface model carbon cycle processes and parametric uncertainty.
Dr. MacBean is Co-Chair of the Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) Project, which is one of 25 global research networks of Future Earth. She is also the land editor for the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES) and a member of the steering committee of the International Land Modeling Forum (ILMF). In 2025 she initiated the first ever international Calibrated Land Model Intercomparison Project (CalLMIP). Dr. MacBean has also been a member of multiple earth observation focused projects and working groups as a climate model user, including the ESA Climate Change Initiative Land Cover Project and the NASA CEOS Land Product Validation Biomass Focus Area Subgroup.
