Remote sensing - tools and implications
Environmental problems of drylands such as desertification processes, land degradation and rehabilitation, land cover and land use change, climatic change, early warning, and more, are characterized by both spatial and temporal dimensions. Therefore, remote sensing techniques, based on long-term monitoring and repetitive data, over vast expanses of unsettled regions, are applicative and powerful tools for research and implementation in these areas.
Special sessions on
REMOTE SENSING - TOOLS AND IMPLICATIONS will take place as part of the conference to promote scientific exchange between experts who work on remote sensing and geoinformation issues of the above drylands-related aspects with special intention to restoration actions and processes.
Theme Organizers:
Prof. Arnon Karnieli
Head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory, BIDR, Ben Gurion University, Israel
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Arnon Karnieli has been the head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, since 1988. His scientific activities are focused on studying desertification and climate change processes. Other research interests are landscape ecology and precision agriculture in drylands. His research tools rely on satellite and aerial image processing, geographic information system, and field (image) spectroscopy. Prof. Karnieli is the Israeli principle investigator of the Vegetation and Environmental New Micro Spacecraft (VEN S). Under this framework, his involvements focused on determining the scientific requirements including spectral bands (location and width) for earth-resources applications and particularly precision agriculture. Prof. Karnieli has published more than 125 papers in scientific journals.
Invited Guest:
Dr. Garik Gutman
NASA, United States
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Currently Manager for the NASA Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program, Dr. Garik Gutman received his Ph.D. in Climate Modeling in 1984 and worked for fourteen years at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a research scientist. In 1996, Dr. Gutman received the U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal Award for developing an original technique using satellite data for reliable analyses of the Earth's vegetation cover and its long-term variations. He joined NASA in 1999 as the LCLUC Program Manager at NASA Headquarters and for the last ten years has been leading this program as well as Landsat-related activities at NASA. He is author of about sixty publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and of several chapters of books. Dr. Gutman was the Chief Editor of a compiled book "Land Change Science" and is a co-Editor of the book "Eurasian Arctic land cover and land use in a changing climate", recently submitted for publication. Dr. Gutman's current research interests include the use of remote sensing for detecting changes in land cover and land use and analyzing the impacts of these changes on climate, environment and society. His NASA research program helps to develop the underpinning science and promotes scientific international cooperation through supporting the development of regional science networks over the globe under the GOFC-GOLD international program. Dr. Gutman has been key in building both the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) and the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Initiative (MAIRS), under the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). Dr. Gutman represents NASA in the CEOS Working Groups on Calibration and Validation and in the CEOS Land Surface Imaging Constellation team. He also co-leads the NASA-USGS Global Land Survey projects (currently focusing on the 2010 dataset).
Dr.Elena Savin
Romania Space Agency
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Currently working as researcher in remote sensing Dr. Elena Savin received her Ph.D. in 2000, with a thesis on "Contributions to the yield forecasting at regional and national scales''.
In 2000, she received the First Prize for Scientific Research, awarded by the Romanian Government and the Commission for Science and Technology for the paper "NOAA-AVHRR image products used in climatologic and agrometeorological applications".
Elena Savin's research includes satellite image processing, interpretation and dedicated products elaboration meteorology, agrometeorology and environment protection.
She developed applications for the use of remote sensing for vegetation state monitoring, thermal or hydric stress detection, estimation of crops biophysical parameters and (LAI, fPAR, albedo, NDWI, EVI, LST) end biomass assessment.
Dr. Elena Savin implemented a statistical method for processing multi-temporal series of satellite-based indexes for drought early warning.
Dr. Elena Savin was the scientific stage manager of national and international projects and presented her work to conferences and published more then 30 scientific papers.
