Fall Colloquium Series Kicks Off with Dr. Christiane Schmullius

Spatio-Temporal Monitoring Of Land Degradation In South Africa

Abstract:
With the launch of the European Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite in 2015 and Sentinel-2 in 2017 a new era of remote sensing began: unprecedented free 10 m pixel spacing and weekly repetition rates generate a wealth of monitoring data sets. These data represent powerful assets for the observation of spatio-temporally very heterogeneous savanna land surfaces. This presentation illustrates operational mapping possibilities with the Copernicus Sentinel satellite fleet for South African environments. Synergistic retrieval of innovative degradation indices in- and outside of National Parks and protected areas is illustrated with examples from the SALDi project (South African Land Degradation Monitor). Data cubes have been established and Jupyter Notebooks generated, which contain a portfolio of Python scripts for production of various vegetation indices, bare soil maps, vegetation height, woody cover and surface moisture. The data cubes allow for the first time to exploit the synergy of radar and optical remote sensing data over six years. Machine learning applications help to analyze the big amount of data, but training and accuracy assessments require also in-situ data and feedback from local experts. Therefore, we are using own soil moisture measurements and interaction with regional scientists and stake holders for interpretation and validation.

Biography:
Christiane Schmullius has been the Science Team Lead for the SIR-C/X-SAR and SRTM radar spaceshuttle missions. Since 2000, she chairs the Department for Earth Observation at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Prof. Dr. Schmullius has been coordinating a series of large forest biomass projects: SIBERIA-I and -II, FRA-SAR, BIOMASAR, GlobBiomass.
She was a member of ESA's Earth Science Advisory Committee and the German Future Earth Committee. Her research focuses on terrestrial surfaces ranging from operational vegetation mapping (forest biomass and agriculture), land cover to soil moisture monitoring and application of operational and experimental Earth observation sensors in the optical and microwave domains. Special expertise is on wall-to-wall monitoring concepts for land surface analyses to support climate change topics and - in this context - big data handling jointly from Sentinel-satellites and in situ networks.