This research group covers various applications of spatial remote sensing related to environmental issues, and it has specialized in obtaining relevant information for the management of forest fires in terms of prevention (estimation of risk conditions), fire detection and evaluation of damages, cartography of burned area, and determination of fire severity.
Main lines of work:
- Estimation of moisture content of live and dead fuels from satellite images and meteorological indices.
- Estimation of fire occurrence factors, particularly human factors, at local, regional and global scales.
- Fuel mapping using optical, hyperspectral images and LiDAR data.
- Fire severity estimation from optical, radar and LiDAR images.
- Mapping of burned areas using optical and radar sensors.
- Validation of burned area products.
- Impact of the burned area on the global dynamics of the vegetation.
- Estimation of biomass/carbon and its dynamics from active (SAR) and passive (optical) time series.
- Monitoring of the state of forests (growth, health, water content) using drones and satellite data.
- Integration of sensors through machine-learning techniques.
- Estimation of forest structural variables (biomass, LAI, clumping index) and their dynamics with a multi-scale multi-sensor approach.
- Evaluation of deforestation and forest degradation processes.
- Estimation of emissions produced by forest fires.
- Smoke dispersion analysis.
- Study of the effects of pollution produced by forest fires on the health of the population.
- Analysis of the carbon footprint, motivations and factors.
- Environmental ethics, philosophical and theological roots of nature conservation.