Plants play a crucial role in the history of the Earth. They have accelerated the water cycle, and have made soil formation possible, and provide Oxygen through photosynthesis. They are also the primary sink of carbon dioxide, and they are our food.
Ongoing changes in climate affect the functioning of plants, but also vice versa: Land cover changes affect the surface properties of the Earth which in turn affect the climate. For sustainable land cover, ecology and food production, we must be able to quantify the role of plants in the climate on Earth.
This course offers tools to quantify processes in terrestrial vegetation using contemporary remote sensing signals (reflectance, chlorophyll fluorescence, and thermal remote sensing) in combination with in situ data. There is attention for natural ecosystems as well as crops.The following topics will be covered:
Plant physiological processes and their relation with satellite data
The use of radiative transfer models for scaling processes from the molecular to the satellite level
The retrieval of plant functional traits from satellite data, in particular Sentinel 1,2,3, and 5 (Tropomi), and airborne data collected in the frame of the ESA’s 8th Earth Explorer mission FLEX.
The use of these data in dynamic vegetation model
The participants will work on their own mini-project, such as: the effect of companion planting, the water productivity or water footprint, the effect of volcano eruptions, re- or deforestation.