News and Events

The Remote Sensing Research Group (RSGB) at the Institute of Geography, University of
Bern, Switzerland has an opening of a PostDoc position on remote sensing of snow extent
(SE). This position is part of a project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the
frame of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) program. The successful candidate will contribute
to the ESA CCI+ snow project starting 1.July 2022. The goal of the project is to
implement/develop a snow extent time series (1978 – 2023) at global and continental scale
retrieved from (Advanced) Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR and VHRR) data. The
main focus of the research position will be on algorithm development, (pre-) processing of
AVHRR GAC and LAC data, and development of uncertainty measures. The researcher
should also contribute to the project reports required by ESA. In addition, a close collaboration
with the team members of the international CCI+ snow consortium and RSGB scientists is
expected. The PostDoc position of the ESA CCI+ project is funded for a duration of 30 months.

Your profile:
- PhD in remote sensing with focus on operational systems
- Experience in processing of AVHRR data
- Excellent skills in programming (Python) and statistical data analysis
- Good knowledge in machine learning (ML) and neuronal networks
- Experience in Linux systems and handling of big data
- Excellent knowledge in English and good writing skills
- Relevant peer-reviewed publications

Your tasks:
- Algorithm development for the retrieval of snow extent (physical based and ML)
- Data processing (with support from our ITC expert and an external CCI+ team)
- Data analysis, error propagation, and uncertainty assessment of the snow extent
product
- Presentation and publication of results at project meetings, international conferences
and for peer-reviewed publications
- Contribution to ESA reporting
- Supervision of master students within this project

Application: Applications should include (i) CV, (ii) letter of motivation and (iii) two contacts
for reference.
Please, send your application in ONE pdf to stefan.wunderle@giub.unibe.ch .

How to balance gender equality in Remote Sensing and GIS? The session ‚Inspiring Girls Expedition‘ at the AGIT2021 Youth Forum (Wednesday, 07.07., 11 am) addressed the importance of female scientist in the domain of Digital Earth Technologies. Digital Earth Technologies can support the global defined sustainable development goal (SDG): Gender Equality, with a focus on empowering women and girls in Science. The session highlighted the engagement of the Central Asian Inspiring Girls Expedition (‚Adventure of Science: Women and glacier in Central Asia’) for gender equality in Remote Sensing and GIS. The tuition-free programm empowers young women to lead and succeed through science, art, and wilderness exploration. Due to the COVID restrictions, the replacement Adventure of Science at Home Programm further enhanced and forstered the girls and young women’s curiosities in Digital Earth Technologies to strengthen their interests and favour gender equality in this field. Speakers: Helga Weber and Perizat Imanalieva, GIS and RS Scientist at CAIAG, Kyrgyzstan, and former AoS programm participants. 

Links:

• AGIT https://agit.at
• Inspiring Girls https://www.inspiringgirls.org
• Inspiring Girls in Central Asia: Adventure of Science ‚Women and glacier in Central Asia’ https://www.inspiringgirls.org/central-asia-en

Watch the video about the Central Asian Inspiring Girls Expedition (~3 min), prepared by Perizat Imanalieva, 2021.

News from the ESA CCI+ Snow project to which our group is substantially contributing by developing and implementing algorithms to retrieve global snow cover extent based on AVHRR GAC data.

The first CCI Snow Cover Fraction (SCF) Climate Research Data Packages (CRDP) from AVHRR and MODIS sensors have been released in May 2021. Daily products are available with about 5 km pixel spacing from AVHRR data for the period 1982 – 2019, and with about 1 km pixel spacing from MODIS data for the period 2000 - 2019. The products are available via the CCI Data Portal (http://cci.esa.int/data).
 
In forested areas, the SCF CRDPs provide two different thematic information: snow viewable on top of the forest canopy (SCFV), and snow on the ground (SCFG), i.e. a canopy correction was applied. In non-forested areas, the SCFV and the SCFG products are equal.
 
Further details on the dataset and direct access to the dataset are provided at the CEDA Archive:

• Global daily SCFV products from AVHRR (1982 - 2019), 5 km pixel spacing
• Global daily SCFG products from AVHRR (1982 - 2019), 5 km pixel spacing
• Global daily SCFV products from MODIS (2000 - 2019), 1 km pixel spacing
• Global daily SCFG products from MODIS (2000 - 2019), 1 km pixel spacing

Mountain regions are sensible to changes in snow cover. From space, we can observe snow cover extent, which is defined as one of the Essential Climate Variables. Thus, snow cover is critical to characterize the Earth Climate in order to mitigate and adapt to its impact under climate change. Its observation over a long time span improves our understanding of climate variability and changes in alpine snow cover. We develop a novel fractional snow cover product and analyse changes in snow cover extent using consistent satellite imagery over a ~40 years period. In the current ProClim Flash, the ongoing GCOS Switzerland snow project is highlighted as an example for climate relevant observation from space.

Check out the ProClim Flash 73 here

Read about the GCOS Fractional Snow Cover Project here

Between April and November 2020, the Remote Sensing Research Group analyzed the pedestrian and traffic volumes on different public spaces, streets and motorways in Switzerland. Convolutional neural networks were used to automatically detect different object classes in more than 200'000 public webcam images. Impacts of the restrictive measures of the Federal Council due to the COVID-19 pandemic on the pedestrian volume were most clearly observed in April and the beginning of March in city centers. The figure shows daily and weekly average of detected pedestrians and vehicles per webcam image at Barfüsserplatz in Basel. Moreover, a constant decrease in traffic volume from April to August 2020 and a slight decrease from end of October 2020 was observed for all motorway sites. In spring 2021, this study will be continued and extended to analyze further developments and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pedestrian and traffic volumes in different public spaces.

For further information feel free to contact: Céline Portenier

The Remote Sensing Research Group (RSGB) was successful in two open funding calls to study essential climate parameters and to further contribute to climate research with satellite data.

The first new project, called SemantiX, combines heritage AVHRR and Copernicus Sentinel-3 A/B data to create climatological time series for Essential Climate Variables (ECVs; snow cover, lake surface water temperature und vegetation index). Processed in semantic data cubes and linked to mobile citizen science applications, the information can be easily accessed by end users. This provides a new and interactive way to access climate time series from satellite data and learn about climatic changes. The two-years project is funded by the Austrian Space Application Program (ASAP) and will start August 1, 2020.

The second project was recently funded by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) – MeteoSwiss. To enhance and strengthen the Swiss climate observing system, a novel, long-term fractional snow cover data set will be developed for 1981 until 2021. The 40-year time series of fractional snow cover for Switzerland will be extracted from AVHRR data (archived at RSGB) including uncertainty and quality information. By the end of the project, the data set will be publicly available to support future climate studies as an independent data source on snow cover dynamics. The production and analysis of the data set over the 18 months project will be in close cooperation with Climate Evolution, MeteoSwiss.