Thomas Groen

Being an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources,I aim to inform society about the fate of (semi) natural ecosystems. In many developing nations and upcoming economies, information on ecosystems is scarce. Nevertheless, ecosystems in these countries often harbour rich biodiversity and the indirect services they deliver to society are assumed to be large. To effectively protect and manage these systems requires reliable methods to estimate the current state and changes in these ecosystems from observations, both remotely sensed as well as from the ground. To this end, I study and teach on empirical spatial interpolation techniques (so called species distribution modelling in ecology or environmental niche modelling in agronomy), stress detection in vegetation with thermal infrared remote sensing techniques and how to extract early warning signals of tipping points in ecosystems from satellite time series. 

Part of the NRM Curriculum and the iGEON distance based course.

Teaching topics related to:

• Spatial Modelling
• Species Distribution Models
• Statistics
• Modelling in R
• Quantitative Ecology
• Thermal spectroscopy
• Field Work Preparation
• Research Skills

Topics covered by current and past research include:

• Species distribution modelling techniques, error propagation and applications for conservation
• Hyperspectral thermal remote sensing of plant stress
• remote sensing and spatial modelling to assess dynamics in ecosystems
• Interactions between savanna vegetation patterns and fire
• Early-warning for tipping points in ecosystems
• Novel methodologies to determine carbon budgets of forests
• Novel methodologies to create long time series from various geographical information sources,

Activities in capacity development

I have undertaken fieldwork in Australia, Bulgaria, India and South Africa and performed consulting and training service work in Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Ghana, Greece, Indonesia, Kenya, Namibia, Russia (Sacha Republic), Rwanda, Uganda, and Vietnam.