Oil palm expansion along rivers
It is a requirement to have a good understanding of the basic remote sensing principles and to be able to work with different types of satellite imagery. Also basic programming skills are required.
Depending on the formulation of the topic and the circumstances, fieldwork may be organised.
Suggested elective courses
Anything with vegetation mapping and monitoring, change detection and machine learning techniques
Palm oil is an important vegetable oil. It is used for cooking, biofuel and it is an ingredient in a huge number of products that you find in the supermarket. Because it is the vegetable oil with the highest oil yield per hectare, it has expanded over the entire tropics with the largest distribution in Indonesia and Malaysia. This has gone hand in hand with deforestation and many other environmental and social impacts. Forest laws and regulations as well as sustainability production standards require protection of waterways and water bodies. These regulations are usually applied stricter to large plantations than for small holder plantations. This results into many violations of the forest laws. Besides, vulnerable nature that should receive protection disappears. Riverine vegetation is extremely important for biodiversity conservation and the water quality and quantity are at risk.
We do not know yet how much of the riverine areas in oil palm growing countries are affected and making an inventory of the magnitude of the problem is essential. Finding algorithms that are robust and reliable is the first step towards enabling such an inventory.
Is this the challenge that you are willing to take up?
Develop methods and test robustness of remote sensing algorithms to detect oil palm establishment along rivers.
The topic will not be adapted. The student have the flexibility to write a proposal that fits within the program. This holds for both M-SE and M-GEO.