PhD position in ecological monitoring by satellite remote sensing and forest change modelling

The Research Laboratory in Environmetrics and Geomatics of the
Department ofEnvironmental Sciencesand Land Use Planning, Université
catholique de Louvain, is opening a
PhD position in ecological monitoring by satellite
remote sensing and forest change modelling
(48 months)

The research will involve SPOT-Vegetation time series(satellite data) to derive and analyse the vegetation phenology trends at global scale, and developing a forest cover change model forCentral Africa. The phenology results

and the GIS model outputs will be used in the vegetation model ORCHIDEE to improve

our understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle and forecast its evolution under

different land-use and climate change scenarios.

Supported by the Federal Science Policy Office, the PhD research will take place within

the VEGECLIM project involving the Research Laboratory in Environmetrics and

Geomatics (UCL, coordinator), the laboratory of Plant Ecology (UGent) and the

Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE, Paris). The project

will provide quantitative estimates of the carbon stocks and fluxes in Africa and more

particularly in central African forests.

The candidate will be :

- graduated as bioengineer or equivalent ;

- trained in remote sensing, geomatics and/or time series analysis ;