International Research Fellowship: Application of Global Biophysical Fields Derived from Large-Swath Remote Sensing Data to the Detection and Categorization of Land-Cover Change

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0301307LindermanThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Marc Linderman to work with Dr. Eric Lambin at Universite Catholique de Louvain, in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, on the application of global biophysical fields derived from large-swath remote sensing data to the detection and categorization of land cover-change.The ability to accurately monitor changes to land cover and land use is crucial for accurate assessments of the rates of impact, to model ecological systems, and to effectively mitigate future losses of natural areas. As part of a new European initiative (CYCLOPES), this project will examine methods to decouple and categorize natural and human land-cover change. CYCLOPES will employ large-swath remote sensing data and innovative methods such as the fusion of several data sources and inversion of current radiative transfer models using artificial neural networks to develop spatially and temporally consistent biophysical data. The land-cover change detection approach will then compare seasonal development curves for successive years of remotely-sensed land-cover indicators with particular emphasis on comparing the utility of biophysical data to discriminate between causes of land-cover change relative to commonly used vegetation indices. Collaboration with CYCLOPES and Dr. Lambin will provide opportunities for the PI to examine broad-scale land-cover analyses, and gain additional experience in data and algorithm development and global modeling. The methods developed here will enable him to further examine human impacts on ecosystem processes from local to global scales.