Suhyb Salama

Suhyb Salama is Associate Professor of Remote Sensing of Water Quality and Water Resources Management at the Department of Water Resources in the Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente, the Netherlands.

Suhyb Salama earned a PhD degree in Civil Engineering (2003) and an MSc degree with Great Distinction (magna cum laude) in Hydraulic Engineering (1999) from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium and a BSc degree in Civil Engineering (1993) from Damascus University in Syria.

Suhyb Salama was a consultant in geo-information and remote sensing applications at the Spatial Division Leuven (SADL) in Belgium before he joined ITC in July 2007.

Suhyb Salama's current research and teaching focus on remote sensing and numerical modeling of water quality and interactions with the ecosystem, and ecosystems responses to climate and water cycle variations.

Expertise

Remote Sensing, Radiative Transfer

Water Quality, Hydrology

Numerical Inversion and Optimization

Stochastic Error Analysis 

Suhyb Salama lectures in water resources research from space: radiative transfer and atmospheric correction, remote sensing of water quality and observing the hydrological cycle from space. In addition he is a coordinator of block 3 and module 12, 14 and 15 in the MSc program of Water Resources and Environment Management at ITC.

From 2007 to 2013 Suhyb has supervised 30 MSc research topics, 20 of which were on water quality. Three of Suhyb's MSc students were awarded for their excellent MSc researches:

• 52 North price, (2009): Zun Yin for his research on Hydrological transport model calibration and integration by GUI in 52°North/ILWIS OS for the Dinkel River for supporting water quality studies.
• 52 North price, (2009): Amos Kabobah for his research on Developing water quality modelling scheme in ILWIS Open for the Dinkel River in support of climate change and adaptation studies.
• Best MSc award of the UT, (2010): Matthew Ofwono for his research on: Characterization of the effects of climate variation on land surface temperature and soil moisture through stochastic analysis of long term SSM/I observations over the Tibetan plateau.

Suhyb Salama is currently the Director of the education Programme Master in Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation

Deriving water quality variables from EO data requires four steps: atmospheric correction, model-inversion and uncertainty estimation. Suhyb Salama has contributed to each part with scientific publications in leading international journals. He has pioneered the development of (i) uncertainty decomposition; (ii) stochastic inversion; (iii) resolving the sub-scale spatial variability; and (iv) the operational use of geostationary satellites for water quality studies. 

Suhyb Salama's current activities within the Netherlands automated monitoring program (IN PLACE: Integrated Network for Production and Loss Assessment in the Coastal Environment) has led ITC and NIOZ (Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) to develop a generic method for calibration and validation (Cal/Val). The results have changed the treatment of Cal/Val within the accuracy assessment of satellite observed geophysical variables in land and water.

The scalability of Suhyb Salama's research is reflected through publishing in other research fields related to land surface hydrology. He is supervising four PhD candidates in diverse research fields covering a wide scope of hydrology: from water quality to hydrometeorology and water footprint.

Activities in capacity development

Current projects

• Alcantara, Tiger: Ecological modeling of the Nile Delta.
• Dragon III: Variations of estuarine turbid plumes and mudflats in response to human activities and climate change.
• INPLACE: Integrated Network for Production and Loss Assessment in the Coastal Environment.