21.02.2024New Assistant Professorship in Remote Sensing of Environmental Changes

Livia completed her PhD in topography and cartography at the University of Padua in Italy, where she focused on the photogrammetric reconstruction of digital elevation models in alpine catchments. She spent the final year of PhD research at the Technical University of Vienna in Austria within the photogrammetry and remote sensing group and continued there as a postdoctoral researcher. During this time, her research focus transitioned to forestry using optical, Lidar and radar data. Subsequently, Livia pursued further research at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany, exploring the potential of airborne historical images for quantifying changes in alpine catchments. Two years later, she joined the University of Oslo, focusing on analysing optical satellite data to observe glaciers in cold regions. Before her appointment at the University of Zurich, she worked at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, specialising in forestry remote sensing.

Livia and her new research group at the Department of Geography aim to develop novel open-source techniques and methods to quantify environmental changes and thus understand the spatiotemporal patterns of climate change impacts on the cryosphere, forestry, and geomorphology. Thereby, they aim to observe and understand related processes by combining multi-sensor satellite data with airborne observations, including historical images and upcoming earth observation missions.