I am head of the Earth Observation (EO) team at CEH Wallingford and coordinate the EO activities across CEH. The main focus of the EO team at Wallingford is on developing, analysing and producing EO-derived information for research in land-surface atmosphere interactions, but will also develop EO datasets for other areas of CEH research. The group is responsible for producing a MODIS-based circumpolar daily burnt area map of the boreal forests (2001 onwards) and for leading the ESA-funded ALANIS Methane project.

Currently, I am involved in the EC-IP project EBONE (European Biodiversity Observation Network) where I lead the Work Package responsible for the integration of EO with in situ data.

I am also a Co-Investigator in the NERC grant Changing Land-Atmosphere Feedbacks in Tropical African wetlands and the NERC consortium grant TROBIT (Tropical Biomes in Transition). Topics on which I am focusing at the moment are the impact of leaf phenology (leaf life cycle) on tropical canopy reflectance and satellite-derived vegetation indices (with PhD student Cecilia Chavana-Bryant) and the value of time-series in grassland habitat mapping and monitoring.

 

In the recent past my team and I have characterised the variability in phenological behaviour of plant functional types by means of remotely-sensed time series analysis (the NERC-funded QUERCC project); I have coordinated the EC-funded GMES project, Linking Pan-European land cover change to pressures on biodiversity, and have been involved amongst others in the Nature Observatory of the Integrated EC-GMES Project GEOLAND.

My main focus throughout my career has been the retrieval of forest parameters from optical sensors, measuring land cover, vegetation cover, and dynamics in various environments: boreal and sub-tropical forests, temperate and semi-arid grasslands.

My current research interests include forest disturbances, land-surface atmosphere interactions and habitat quality and biodiversity.