Public talk by Matthias Forkel / 14.07.2021

Public talk

Global to local changes in vegetation and fires 

Environmental remote sensing for past to future dynamics in the Earth system

Matthias Forkel was inviting for a public talk about the research topics and projects at the junor professorship for environmental remote sensing at 14. July 2021. You can find the pre-recoding in English here:

Abstract: Satellite observations show global and small-scale changes in vegetation, forest and bush fires over the last decades. However, little is known about their future changes because climate and land surface models insufficiently represent vegetation dynamics and/or have major uncertainties. Historical and state-of-the-art data from remote sensing have a great potential to access new information and gain knowledge about ecosystems and to evaluate and improve those vegetation models. For example, to improve the modelling of vegetation fires, new satellite observations of vegetation properties can be combined with methods of machine learning. Specifically, observations from microwave remote sensing have a great potential because they are sensitive to changes in biomass and the water content of vegetation. Based on recent and future research at the junior professorship in environmental remote sensing, I will show how novel information about vegetation is retrieved from near surface and satellite remote sensing systems and how the information is used for the improved modelling of vegetation and fire dynamics in vegetation models and machine learning approaches. The talk gives an overview about the research topics and projects of the junior professorship.