Aolin Jia is a doctoral student and Research Graduate Assistant at the University of Maryland in the Department of Geographical Sciences. He earned a B.Eng degree in Geomatics Engineering from the Central South University and an M.S. in Cartography and Geographical information engineering from the Beijing Normal University. His areas of interest include surface radiation budget, estimation of cloudy-sky land surface temperature and heat fluxes, and hydrological balance. His dissertation research focuses on the boreal forest feedback towards the climate warming effect.