News

A new paper assessing "Effects of atmospheric, topographic, and BRDF correction on imaging spectroscopy-derived data products" was published in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing by Marius Voegtli with contributions from Alexander Damm. The paper evaluates the effect of different data pre-processing steps on derived vegetation information and provides guidance on suited combinations of data pre-processing for reliable information retrievals.

A new paper describing "WAFER: A new method to retrieve sun-induced fluorescence based on spectral wavelet decompositions" was published in Remote Sensing of Environment by Veronika Oehl and Alexander Damm. The paper introduces a new fluorescence retrieval method that rethinks current retrieval paradigms and offers a complementary retrieval strategy relying on only very few assumptions. The performance was evaluated using simulated data and in situ FloX spectrometer data.

A new paper providing "Empirical insights on the use of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence to estimate short-term changes in crop transpiration under controlled water limitation" was published in ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing by Rifat Ahmed with contributions from Alexander Damm. The paper describes a data experiment to evaluate suited entry points of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence in crop transpiration modelling.

Remika Gupana defended her PhD thesis entitled “Remote Sensing of Sun-induced Chlorophyll-a Fluorescence in Optically Complex Waters”. Remika’s PhD work was the first implemented at the interface between us and Eawag’s Remote Sensing group. Congratulations on this big success and all the best for your future!

The International Space Science Institute founded the GALENE working group. The working group comprises several international experts and us, and aims to advance the Global Assessment of Limnological, Estuarine and Neritic Ecosystems via satellite remote sensing. During the first workshop, a review of the state of the art was done to define characteristics and the design of a future satellite mission focussing on highly dynamical coastal and inland water ecosystems. We are happy to be part of this exciting activity!

We welcome Lars Groeneveld as new PhD candidate in our group. Lars joins the UrbaNature project funded by MeteoSchweiz and will work on new approaches to estimate abiotic and biotic factors in urban environments for water and carbon exchange modelling.

This is exciting news! The Swiss National Science Foundation will fund our project Evaluating delta-wide changes in geogenic arsenic (As) contamination under anthropogenic pressures: An integrated approach to assess groundwater vulnerability in Vietnam (DeltAs). The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between us, the Inorganic Environmental Geochemistry at ETH), the Stochastic Hydrogeology and Geostatistics group at University Neuchatel), other national colleagues and international partners from USA and Vietnam. In our interdisciplinary project we combine hydrogeology, geochemistry, remote sensing, and data science and aim to assess changes in the arsenic contamination patterns of the Red River and Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

We welcome Sergio Roy Martinez as new PhD candidate in our group. Sergio joins the Fluo4Eco project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and will work on the synergistic use of fluorescence spectroscopy and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing for advanced forest monitoring.

We sucessfully installed a CIMEL sun-photometer at the Laegeren site in the north of Zurich, Switzerland. The instrument is also part of The Aerosol Robotic Network (Aeronet). We are happy to contribute to this important network activity. A big thank you to all involved persons for the installation of the instrument and the Swiss National Science Foundation for contributing funding in frame of our Fluo4Eco project.

Our new paper entitled "Networking the forest infrastructure towards near real-time monitoring – A white paper" was published in Science of the Total Environment with contributions by Alexander Damm. The paper argues toward the need to for integrated forest monitoring networks and conceptually describes main components of such a meta-network.

We warmly welcome Loé Maire as new PhD candidate in our group. Loé is affiliated with Eawag’s Remote Sensing group and will work on new remote sensing methods to estimate phytoplankton diversity in lakes.

A new paper reporting that Biodiversity mediates relationships between anthropogenic drivers and ecosystem services across global mountain, island and delta systems was published in Global Environmental Change with contributions by Alexander Damm. The paper provides unique and new insight on the importance of biodiversity for human well being.

Alex Damm was appointed Associate Professor for Remote Sensing of Water Systems. Congratulations!