PhD defence: Helene Hoffmann Nielsen

Helene Hoffmann M. Nielsen defends her PhD thesis:

Evapotranspiration from UAV images
A new scale of measurements  
  

Supervisor
Associate Professor Thomas Friborg, IGN

Assessment Committee
Associate Professor Rasmus Fensholt, IGN (chair)
Associate Professor Signe Normand, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University
Principal Researcher María Pat. González-Dugo, The Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training

After the PhD defence there will be a reception in Rød stue, Øster Voldgade 10, Area 6, First floor – everybody is welcome.

Summary
Currently, two main events drive the research on evapotranspiration (ET): The growing world population that is accompanied by intensified irrigation of increasing cultivated lands, and the need to better understand climate changes and its effect on water cycles. As such, ET is an important parameter in agricultural, hydrological and atmospheric sciences.  Meanwhile, conducting direct and accurate measurements of ET is difficult. Studies conducted in this thesis investigate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs – aka drones) as platforms for sensors that enable estimates of ET at a spatial and temporal resolution which is not feasible using the current state-of-the-art measuring methods: eddy covariance and satellites. It has thus been investigated to what extent UAV systems can provide accurate, high resolution (especially thermal infrared) data which are suited as input to various ET algorithm and other purposes requiring good quality remote sensing data.

The thesis is available from the PhD administration office 04.1.417