ufz

UFZ – Germany

The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany, was established in 1991 as the first and only centre in the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centres to be exclusively devoted to environmental research in a great variety of fields. It currently employs around 1100 people. Founded in response to the severe pollution prevailing in Central Germany, the UFZ has become a world-wide acknowledged centre of expertise in the remediation and re-naturation of contaminated landscapes, as well as the preservation of biodiversity and natural landscapes. UFZ is and was participating in 83 Projects funded within FP7 and Horizon 2020, 12 of them coordinated by UFZ. Additionally, UFZ is or was the host for 3 ERC grants, 2 Starting – and 1 Advanced Grant, and has coordinated 3 ITNs. Since 2014 the UFZ is leading the European Topic Centre on Inland, coastal and marine waters funded by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

The project will essentially be implemented by:

  • Dr.-Ing. Jan Bumberger is the head of the working group Environmental Sensor and Information Systems at the Department Monitoring and Exploration Technologies (MET). As an engineer for electrical and information technology he obtained a PhD in 2011 in the field of the development of in-situ measurement technologies at the Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany. He has extensive experience in the area of the development of methods and techniques for the investigation of terrestrial systems. Major objectives are the development of concepts and the realization of an application study for ad-hoc sensor networks for the monitoring of environmental parameters, especially with regard to adaptive measuring concepts for multi-scale measuring in heterogeneous systems. A further field of research is the signal processing and data analysis of multiparametric or rather cross-domain information. In the field of remote sensing he is a specialist for Cal/Val activities within the UFZ and organized/managed remote sensing validation campaigns.
  • Dr. Steffen Zacharias is soil hydrologist, work group leader at the Department Monitoring and Exploration Technologies (MET), and one of the coordinators of TERENO in Germany.. He has proven experience in sensing and observation of terrestrial systems, soil physics, soil hydrology and cosmic ray neutron sensing. Furthermore, he contributed to several European research programmes like EXPEER, eLTER H2020 and is member of the Core Group of the ongoing eLTER ESFRI initiative.
  • Priv.-Doz. Dr. habil. Angela Lausch is the head of the working group (staff 9) – Hyperspectral remote sensing at Helmholtz Centre of Environment – UFZ, Department of Computational Landscape Ecology. As a biologist she obtained a PhD in 2000 in the field of remote sensing and biodiversity modelling, at the University in Bonn. In 2015 she finished their Habilitation thesis at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She is responsible for setting up the technology and application of the UFZ’s own Imaging Hyperspectral Sensors AISA-EAGLE/HAWK (450-2500nm)/ HySpex (450-2500nm), Drone (RCG, Thermal, Multispectral cameras) on different platforms – long-term monitoring platforms in the laboratory and GCEF and different aircraft platforms (Cessna, Piper, Drone). She organizes and managed hyperspectral aircraft and drone campaigns. She is an specialist in digital image processing, machine learning, linked open data approaches, semantic web, applied to segmentation, classification, change detection, data fusion, scaling effects as well as analysis of process – pattern interactions in context of biodiversity, vegetation and soil/soilwater-plant-spectral reflectance and landscape interaction. She is active member of the Group on Earth Observations – Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), Metadata management for collaborative use and linking of digital research data and involved in GoFAIR-initiatives
  • Prof. Dr. Peter Dietrich is a geophysicist and Head of Monitoring and Exploration Technology at the UFZ in Leipzig and also Professor for Environmental and Engineering Geophysics at the University of Tübingen. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of measurement and monitoring methods from geophysics, hydrogeology and geotechnology for the efficient, high-resolution investigation of ecosystems. Building on his expertise in geophysics and Direct Push technology, Professor Dietrich and his team develop and validate innovative approaches for near-surface exploration, remote sensing methods and ad-hoc sensor networks to allow the investigation of processes on a landscape scale.

Key expertise

  • Interdisciplinary research within complex environmental issues
  • Integrated observation and monitoring concepts
  • Computing, Machine Learning, Semantics and Ontologies
  • Calibration and validation of remote sensing data
  • Remote sensing dedicated to various disciplines