Remote Sensing Centre for Earth System Research


Leipzig is a vibrant hotspot for creativity in eastern Germany, known for its world-class research in biodiversity and ecosystem research and related areas. The Faculty of Physics and Earth System Sciences at Leipzig University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) haved teamed up and established the Remote Sensing Centre for Earth System Research to expand research in this area and better understand ecosystems in a changing world

Mission

  • How will geo- and ecosystem functions respond to the global environmental and societal transformations?

  • What are the spatiotemporal dynamics of change in the land-atmosphere water, energy, and carbon feedback systems?

  • How can we quantify and assess Biodiversity-Ecosystem-Functioning (BEF) relationships across scales?

  • How can we best integrate remote sensing techniques and modeling frameworks to improve our understanding of the Earth system?

Answering fundamental research questions of this kind and developing the right tools for this endeavour is the scientific mission of the RSC4Earth. Also key to our mission is preparing the next generation of Earth system sciences for addressing this quest.

Featured Publications

Recent Publications

Deadtrees.Earth - An Open-Access and Interactive Database for Centimeter-Scale Aerial Imagery to Uncover Global Tree Mortality Dynamics
Excessive tree mortality is a global concern and remains poorly understood as it is a complex phenomenon. We lack global and temporally …

Meet the Team

Groups

Principal Investigators

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Hannes Feilhauer

Professor for Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Miguel D. Mahecha

Professor for Earth System Data Science

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Jian Peng

Professor for Hydrology and Remote Sensing / Head of Remote Sensing Department (UFZ)

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Michael Vohland

Professor for Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing

Researchers

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Tobias Braun

Earth System Data Science

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Eya Cherif

PhD candidate / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Francisco José Cuesta-Valero

Research Fellow / Remote Sensing Department (UFZ)

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Daniel Doktor

Senior Scientist & Group Leader of Land Cover & Dynamics

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Ida Flik

Research Fellow / Earth System Data Science

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Almudena García-García

Postdoctoral scientist / Remote Sensing Department (UFZ)

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Claudia Guimarães-Steinicke

Postdoctoral fellow / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Sarah Habershon

Research Assistant / Earth System Data Science

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Christopher Hutengs

PhD candidate / Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing

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Maksim Iakunin

Post doctoral scientist / Land Cover & Dynamics

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Chaonan Ji

Postdoctoral fellow / Earth System Data Science

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Julia S. Joswig

Postdoctoral scientist / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Guido Kraemer

Postdoctoral associate / Earth System Data Science

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Maximilian Lange

Postdoctoral scientist / Land Cover & Dynamics

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Pedro J. Leitão

Postdoctoral scientist / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Antonia D. Ludwig

PhD candidate / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Swapna Mahanand

Postdoctoral associate / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Francesco Martinuzzi

PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

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Daniel Mederer

PhD candidate / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Milena Mönks

Scientific project management in the Breathing Nature initiative / Earth System Data Science

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David Montero

PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

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Karin Mora

Postdoctoral fellow / Earth System Data Science

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Clemens Mosig

PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

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Kolja Nenoff

Research fellow / Earth System Data Science

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Soroor Rahmanian

Postdoctoral fellow / Remote Sensing in Geo- and Ecosystem Research

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Elisabeth Rahmsdorf

PhD candidate / Land Cover & Dynamics

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Anne Reichmuth

Research fellow / Land Cover & Dynamics

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Martin Reinhardt

Postdoctoral fellow / Earth System Data Science

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Michael Seidel

PhD candidate / Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing

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Maximilian Söchting

PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

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Daria Svidzinska

Postdoctoral fellow / Earth System Data Science

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Khalil Teber

PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

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Sebastian Wieneke

Postdoctoral associate / Earth System Data Science

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Sophie Wolf

PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

Support

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Angelika Brachmann

Office management / Earth System Data Science

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Andreas Schmidt

Scientific Technician & Research Software Engineer / Remote Sensing Department (UFZ)

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René Voigt

Technical employee / Physical lab technician

Projects

ARCEME

ARCEME

Use high resolution remote sensing data and machine learning to develop Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Extremes and Multi-hazard Events

Awesome Spectral Indices

Awesome Spectral Indices

A ready-to-use curated list of Spectral Indices for Remote Sensing applications.

COCAP

COCAP

COping CAPacity of nations facing systemic crisis – a global intercomparison exploring the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Cubo

Cubo

Easily create EO mini cubes from STAC in Python.

DeepExtremes

DeepExtremes

Develop and test novel artificial intelligence explanatory tools to decipher compound events (e.g., drought and heatwave) based on “mini-cubes” with high spatial resolution.

DeepFeatures

DeepFeatures

This project aims to create an holistic datacube with latent space variables based on Sentinel-2 spectral indices

Digital Forest

Digital Forest

Develop a near real-time forest monitoring concept and capitalize on latest advances in AI for predicting major impacts of climate extremes.

Earth System Data Lab

Earth System Data Lab

The Earth System Data Lab is a virtual laboratory providing global earth observation data sets and processing tools.

Forest Condition Monitor

Forest Condition Monitor

Establishing a national forest monitor to assess and visualise vegetation condition for a better risk-management of German forests.

ml4earth

ml4earth

Deliver novel AI techniques for earth observation satellite data for studies in earth and climate sciences

MoDEV

MoDEV

The project MoDEV (Model-Data fusion for understanding Environmental Variability) investigates the interplay between carbon and water cycles for three biomes: forest, grassland and agriculture with special focus on the impacts of extreme hydrologic and climatic events as well their long-term trends.

NFDI4Biodiversity

NFDI4Biodiversity

Deliver practical tools for researchers and improve data availability for environmental studies/ecology.

NFDI4Earth

NFDI4Earth

Addresses the digital needs of researchers in Earth System Sciences with the aim to understand the functioning of all subsystems of the Earth system and their interactions.

PARSe Biodiversity

Biodiversity effects on Plant-Atmosphere interactions analysed with Remote Sensing (PARSe Biodiversity)

Satflux

Satflux

Project to derive long-term, near-global ground heat flux estimates from satellite remote sensing data. These estimates will improve our understanding of the recent changes in subsurface conditions and will allow to estimate global changes in ground heat storage during the last 10 to 20 years

TEE Cube

TEE Cube

Time-varying AI-based mapping of ecosystem conditions and extents using multi-source Earth observation data cubes - TEE cube

Virtual Lab

Virtual Lab

The Virtual Lab provides computing infrastructure for teaching.

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