2022

In the last 15 month, we measured the soil temperature and the soil moisture at 250 different locations in our 20 x 20 km large study area in the Fichtel Mountains. At each location the measurement duration was one week or one month. Thus, we now have a dataset with measurements at different locations (forest sites, meadows, and fields) under a variety of meteorological conditions. Now we want to use the data set to model the soil temperature and the soil moisture in the study area continuously in 4D, i.e., for each location, the entire time span, and every soil depth.

We're looking for someone working with us on our upcoming project "BEyond - Learning from the Exploratories to make prediction beyond them: AI-based mapping and explanation of grassland biodiversity and ecosystem functions for entire landscape units”. The project is part of the Biodiversity Exploratories and will start 1st March 2023 or later. We're looking forward to interesting applications.  Find the full description here: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Rektorat/Stellen/ausschreibungen/st_20221111_sk21.html

Our second project meeting of the Carbon-4D project took place in the Fichtelgebirge on October 7. Together with the Soil Ecology of the University of Bayreuth, the current status of the project and initial results were discussed. The measurements of soil temperature and moisture have been running since September 2021 and will continue until December this year. Further information on the project can be found on the project page [en].

We had a great week in the Harz mountains (12.9.22-16.09.22) where students from our institute came together with students from the university of Göttingen, HAWK Göttingen as well as from the University of Würzburg. We learned about current challenges in forestry in the Harz region and how we can support a monitoring of the forests with remote sensing techniques. Especially the interdisciplinarity of the group (students of landscape ecology, forestry, forest science, remote sensing) was a great experience. During Walk&Talk through the National Park, we had the opportunity to exchange ideas between the groups and then to combine the different areas in a joint project work. We are already looking forward to the next joint event next year!

This year's OpenGeoHub Summer School took place from 28.8.-3.9.2022 in Siegburg. As in previous years, there was also a workshop from us, this time on the topic of „Machine learning-based maps of the environment: challenges of extrapolation and overfitting“. The course material is available on Github. The recordings of the lecture and exercise are available. The processed versions will be linked later on our course-website.

Our recently published paper on "Machine learning-based global maps of ecological variables and the challenge of assessing them" [en] was picked up by the WWU press office in an article. The article can be read in the online version of the July 2022 issue [de].

Winners of poster prizes in the bachelor course "Introduction to Remote Sensing"

As part of the course "Introduction to Remote Sensing" for landscape ecologists and geoinformaticians, the presentation of the course projects took place this week.We were impressed by the diversity and quality of the projects!

Winners of the poster award this year are:

1st place: Viktoria Mosch and Damian Stickdorn (heavy rainfall event in the Berchtesgadener Land)

2nd place: Fynn Riepe (Land use changes around the ancient city of Doliche / Dülük since 1992)

3rd place: Jessica Groß and Helena Kunkis (Destruction of peat swamp forests on Borneo in Sebangau National Park)

4th place: Robert Schmitz and Hendrik Lüning (volcanic eruption on La Palma)

5th place: Daniel Dabelstein and Florian Stegmann (impact of the Dos Bocas oil refinery, built in 2018, on the mangrove forest in the Mexican state of Tabasco)

6th place: Katharina Küpers and Ariane Rehn (Black Summer in New South Wales - vegetation loss due to 2019/2020 fires).

After two years of remote conferences, this year we were happy to finally participate in person again. We had inspiring sessions and meetings at the ESA Living Planet Symposium in Bonn along with great discussion at our poster contributions from the Carbon4D and Uebersat Projects. Model transferability, along with utilizing cloud computing in openEO, was also part of a poster at the International Symposium of Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry in Nice.

The recent wave of published global maps of ecological variables has caused as much excitement as it has received criticism. In our new publication "Machine learning-based global maps of ecological variables and the challenge of assessing them", we look into the data and methods mostly used for creating these maps, and discuss whether the quality of predicted values can be assessed, globally and locally.

Meyer H, Pebesma E. 2022. ‘Machine learning-based global maps of ecological variables and the challenge of assessing them.’ Nature Communications 13.
Link to the paper

In a new publication "Nearest neighbour distance matching Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation for map validation" led by our former master student Carles Mila, we propose a new cross-validation method that considers the geographical prediction space of spatial prediction models to obtain better accuracy estimates.

Mila C, Mateu J, Pebesma E, Meyer H. 2022. ‘Nearest neighbour distance matching leave-one-out cross-validation for map validation.’ Methods in Ecology and Evolution n/a.
Link to the paper [en]

As part of the study project Amtsvenn the first UAS flight campaign was successfully conducted on the 3rd of March 2022. High-resolution multispectral and very high-resolution RGB imagery was collected with the WingtraOne. The campaign was supervised by the “Biologische Station Zwillbrock e.V.” to survey the low disturbance of the UAS on wildlife and no disturbances were observed.
The study project investigates how UAS imagery can be used to detect and spatially model the humidity and vitality of bog vegetation. For ground truth, humidity and temperature are measured in a measurement setup developed by the students, representing different gradients (elevation, vegetation, degradation) of the bog.
This study projects follows the ongoing research in the Vechta bogs and kicks off the in April 2022 starting “Reversal Project” [en].
There are many research project, bachelor and master thesis topics for students interested in remote sensing and spatial modelling in bog ecosystems. If interested, please contact Jan Lehmann [en], Hanna Meyer [en] and Laura Giese [en].

Fieldwork in the snowy Fichtelgebirge

Measurements in the Carbon4D project are in full swing and will continue until the end of 2022. Every week, the team from the University of Bayreuth takes 3 cores in the study area to quantify the mineralization of soil organic carbon. Each month, the team from the University of Münster relocates all profile probes to measure soil temperature and moisture. In the picture gallery you can see some impressions of the field work in the snowy Fichtelgebirge. More information can be found on the project page [en].

What to do when the spatial or temporal resolution of satellite data is insufficient for the research topic? Our study shows how the strengths of two satellite sensors in terms of spatial and temporal resolution can be combined in a data-driven approach. As a result, from 1999 on, we can generate Land Surface Temperature data with a subdaily temporal and 30m spatial resolution for the Antarctic Dry Valleys – a dataset that can be used for various research applications, such as species distribution modelling or to model further relevant environmental information.

• Lezama Valdes L-M, Katurji M, Meyer H. 2021: A Machine Learning Based Downscaling Approach to Produce High Spatio-Temporal Resolution Land Surface Temperature of the Antarctic Dry Valleys from MODIS Data [en]. Remote Sensing 13, 4673. doi: 10.3390/rs13224673

2021

From October 18 to 22 we met together with colleagues from different research institutions for a first joint meeting of our "Earth Observation Network" in the Bavarian Forest. During "Walk&Talk", presentations and joint data acquisition in the field, we exchanged ideas and planned joint research and teaching activities in the field of remote sensing. More information and pictures can be found on the pages of the Earth Observation network [en].

The OpenGeoHub Summer School took place Online from 1 to 3 September 2021. We gave a workshop on „Mapping the area of applicability of spatial prediction models“. All course material [en] as well as video recordings of the Lecture/Practical [en] session is available online. Further information about the scientific project can be found on our pages on Uebersat [en].

The first project meeting of the Carbon-4D project took place between the 7th and 10th of September in the Fichtel Mountains. In cooperation with the soil ecology group of the University of Bayreuth, Maiken Baumberger and Hanna Meyer installed profile probes for soil temperature and moisture measurements. From now on, the 15 probes will be moved every three weeks to measure at several different sites. Furthermore, the University of Bayreuth performs chamber measurements and analyses soil cores. The measured data will be used for the development of a 4D model for the mineralization of soil organic carbon on a landscape scale.

Maiken Baumberger [en] is our new team member from August on.
She will work within the Carbon4D [en] project on the landscape-scale mdoelling of soil respiration.
Welcome to the working group, we are looking forward to working with you!

As part of a master thesis and a research project, Jan Lehmann [en] and the students Candy Fahrenholz and Henning Schneidereit [en] accomplished a field campaign in the national park “Western Pomerania Lagoon Area” from the 13th of June until the 17th of June. With special permits of the national park, which are needed because of strict flight and entry bans, and in close cooperation with the staff of the national park, the two bird sanctuary islands, including active breeding colonies, were mapped with the WingtraOne. A multispectral dataset with information of about 700 hectare was collected and the reaction of the birds towards the drone were observed. The campaign did work out exceedingly well and now we are looking forward to analyse the dataset in aspects of vegetation and structure as well as for the inventory of breeding birds.

More information about the project. [en]

Can our machine learning models make reliable spatial predictions or are we predicting into unknown space? Find out in our recent publication on assessing the area of applicability of spatial prediction models that just got published Methods in Ecology and Evolution:

• Meyer H, Pebesma E. 2021: Predicting into unknown space? Estimating the area of applicability of spatial prediction models [en].’ Methods in Ecology and Evolution 12 (9), 1620-1633. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.13650.

More information about the project Uebersat [en].

Eva Bendix Nielsen is a PhD student at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and will be working with us for the next months as a visiting scientist in the project Antarctic Science Platform [en].
Marvin Ludwig [en] starts with us on 1 April as a research assistant in the project Uebersat [en], and will work on the development of methods for the transferability of AI models in remote sensing.

Welcome to the working group, we are looking forward to working with you!

The Remote Sensing and Spatial Modeling Forum brings the staff of the working group and advanced master students together. In a weekly meeting, topics from current and potential future research fields are discussed. We picture this gathering as a means for exchanging, deepening and broadening knowledge, perspectives and skills within our research group network.
Current scientific literature will be read and discussed and specific methodical approaches / skills of interest to the forum members can be shared in form of small workshops. At the beginning of the term, forum members will propose specific topics and commit to responsibility for a session. This includes either proposing literature for all members to be read before the meeting and preparing to guide the discussion or designing a workshop session. Thus, the forum program will be tailored to current research passions – possibly integrated in future terms by a common metatheme.
Participation is highly encouraged for master students with intentions of writing their thesis in our research group to facilitate the development of research questions that are both close to the current research in the working group and codeveloped by the students.

When and where: Each Monday 16:00 to 18:00, Heisenbergstr. 2 - GEO1 room 513 (or online)
More information is available in the course catalog [en].

In the new year we are starting two new research projects:
In the BMWi-funded project “Uebersat” we will work together with the Institute for Geoinformatics and develop new methods to assess and increase the transferability of satellite-based AI-models. The DFG-funded project “Carbon-4D” will be conducted together with the soil ecology in Bayreuth. Aim of the project is the development of a 4D (space, time, depth) monitoring of mineralization of soil organic carbon (SOC) on the landscape scale. We hope that the data-driven approach will help us to gain new insights into patterns and controlling factors of this key component of the global carbon cycle.

You can find more information on the page of our projects [en].

Our post-doctoral fellow Joana Nogueira Brockmeyer will give a lecture on her current research work on 21.01.2021 with the title "Fire diversity in Brazil using satellite data and metrics of landscape ecology". For further information please see the program of the AG-Landschaftsökologie Colloquium [de].

2020