Professorship in Environmental Remote Sensing

Environmental Remote Sensing at TU Dresden ...

We are an international and interdisciplinary team of remote sensing experts with backgrounds in geoinformatics, geodesy, cartography, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and landscape planning.

Integrating satellite observations, with ecosystem models and machine learning.

Studies

We offer remote sensing courses for the studies in BSc environmental informatics, BSc/MSc geodesy, BSc geography, MSc geoinformatics, MSc cartography, MSc forestry and MSc tropical forestry.

Research

Research focuses on microwave remote sensing of forest-water interactions, remote sensing for forest fire research and management, as well as for landscape change and agriculture.

Environmental Remote Sensing

Environmental remote sensing is the observation, quantification and modeling of environmental systems "from a distance" using aerial and satellite images.

The Chair of Environmental Remote Sensing was created as a Junior Professorship in September 2019 and was made permanent as a full professorship in September 2025. We teach and understand remote sensing as an integrative environmental science at TU Dresden. The Chair is held by Matthias Forkel.

The Chair's core research areas are method development and application of satellite data and derived products for the observation, analysis, modeling and prediction of changes in land ecosystems and their interactions with the carbon and water cycle and the climate. Core research areas include microwave remote sensing for forest-water interactions, remote sensing for forest fire research and management, and remote sensing for landscape change and agriculture , using and developing data-based methods of time series analysis, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and process-based radiative transfer and environmental modeling and model-data integration techniques. Research projects and qualification work cover both basic research topics and practical requirements.

In teaching, the Chair offers comprehensive training in remote sensing for the Bachelor's degree programs in Environmental Informatics, Geodesy and Geoinformation, and Geography as well as for the Master's degree programs in Geoinformation Technologies, Geodesy, Cartography, Forest Sciences and Tropical Forestry. The focus of teaching is on imparting knowledge at the interface between remote sensing (physical principles, sensors, data, methods), environmental research (carbon and water cycle, climate change) and data science (statistics, time series analysis, image processing, machine learning).