Sietse van der Woude, PhD student at Wageningen University & Research.
Background. I am a remote-sensing specialist, focusing on radar-based disturbance detection in European forests. On a day-to-day basis I work on furthering our understanding of the strengths and limitations linked to the use of satellite remote sensing. It is my belief that European forest monitoring will evolve from largely ground-based endeavor to a synthesis of ground- and remote sensing-based methods. This will be necessary in order to understand and respond to an increasingly volatile disturbance landscape, which has emerged as a result of climate change. My research aims to integrate these two methodologies and contribute to resilient, sustainable and productive European forests.
This project. In the first year of my PhD I will work with the climate-smart forestry plots in order to link levels of canopy disturbance to satellite-based radar time series. The experimental plots provide an unprecedented opportunity to empirically assess the relation between radar backscatter and (change in) canopy cover. This will be done by combining Sentinel-1 radar data with high-resolution optical drone imagery. The findings from the climate-smart forestry sites will be crucial in upscaling detection methods to the rest of Europe in the course of my PhD.
Contact: sietse.vanderwoude@wur.n
Climate Smart Forestry 