Welcome
to the Remote Sensing and Spatial Modelling Research Group

In the new year we are starting two new research projects:
In the BMWi-funded project “Uebersat” we will work together with the Institute for Geoinformatics and develop new methods to assess and increase the transferability of satellite-based AI-models. The DFG-funded project “Carbon-4D” will be conducted together with the soil ecology in Bayreuth. Aim of the project is the development of a 4D (space, time, depth) monitoring of mineralization of soil organic carbon (SOC) on the landscape scale. We hope that the data-driven approach will help us to gain new insights into patterns and controlling factors of this key component of the global carbon cycle.

Find further information here.

Our post-doctoral fellow Joana Nogueira Brockmeyer will give a lecture on her current research work on 21.01.2021 with the title "Fire diversity in Brazil using satellite data and metrics of landscape ecology". Further information on the programme can be found here

Our working group celebrates its first anniversary. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all students and colleagues for their great support. The concept for our teaching activities has been mostly completed and from the next semester on we will start with our new module in the master's programme. There will also be new courses in the Bachelor's course. Further information can be found in the amendment of the examination regulations and on our website.

We welcome Joana Nogueira Brockmeyer in our working group. Joana is supported by a scholarship within the framework of WiRe - Women in Research of the WWU and works in her research on fires in the Cerrado ecosystem in Brazil. We are happy about the cooperation.

As part of the webinar series on "Usage of drones in Brazilian ecosystems", organized by the Brazilian environmental authority IBAMA, Jan Lehmann gave a presentation on the scientific exchange between Brazil and Germany. The long-standing cooperation with the universities of Vicosa and Belo Horizonte was presented and the common experiences with drones were discussed.

The webinar is available in Portuguese here.

The OpenGeoHub Summer School took place in Wageningen from 17 - 22 August 2020. We gave a workshop on „Machine learning for earth observation“ and presented our project on "Mapping the area of applicability of spatial prediction models". All course material as well as video recordings of the Lecture and Practical session is available online.

The newspaper of the WWU reports in the current July issue about the research activities of the Geo1Copter project group. The focus is on the flights over the Ems floodplains to quantify the bare soil areas. The article can be downloaded here as PDF.

In cooperation with the working groups Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry and Biodiversity and Ecosystem we have taken a closer look at the study sites in rewetted cutover bog near Vechta. The aim is to bundle the research expertise of the working groups in a jointly planned research proposal with the focus on monitoring of cutover bogs.

We are happy to welcome Julia Binder and Henning M. Schneidereit, who will support us as student assistants in teaching and research.

Within the scope of the exercise "Acquisition and analysis of drone based image data" and a bachelor thesis we have acquired a section of the renaturalized Ems floodplains with the WingtraOne drone. The data (RGB and multispectral) will be evaluated with regard to disturbances and structural mosaics caused by large herbivores. The acquisition is of interest because there is a correlation between exposed soil and the occurrence of soil-nesting insects.

Eva is a PhD student at Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic and a new intern at Institute of Landscape Ecology. Eva's PhD project focuses on studying scent marking of Andean bears and its implications for conservation of the species. The main goal of Eva's internship is to analyze and model habitat and terrain characteristics of Andean bear scent marking using the combination of statistical and spatial analysis. We are looking forward to support her with the data analysis.

We are happy about the latest workgroup member, a DJI P4 Multispectral drone with RTK unit. The new drone is to be used in our courses, so that the students can be trained on a highly modern and widespread system. We are looking forward to exciting days in the field and interesting data.

As Guest Editor we publish a special edition in MDPI Remote Sensing on the topic "Machine Learning Methods for Environmental Monitoring".
More information is available at mdpi.com/si/40565 and submissions are possible until 28 January 2021.

On January 23rd, Maite presented her PhD topic in the AG LÖK colloquium. She wants to model the influence of climate change on the terrestrial ecology of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. At the time she's working on a downscaling algorithm for land surface temperature (LST): Using a machine learning model, a 30m resolution LST product can be calculated from 1000m resolution MODIS LST scenes. The model is based on data from two satellite sensors (Landsat 8 and MODIS), as well as terrain variables.

Since October 2019 we are a new research group for remote sensing and spatial modelling at the Institute for Landscape Ecology. We are looking forward to many exiting projects in research and teaching.