Lab welcomes PhD student Darko Radakovic

Degrees

MS Earth Science, BS Earth Science at the University of Amsterdam

Affiliations

NASA ABoVE Science Team, MSU Remote Sensing Laboratory

My research is focusing on the effects of climate change on tall shrubs in the Alaskan and Canadian regions by combining Dr. Mark Chopping’s CANAPI, CANAPAMI and CANAPANI tall shrub detection software with high resolution satellite imagery from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as part of NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). The research intends to evaluate the changes in shrubs cover and height over a period of 10 – 20 years. The results of this study can be used to determine the impact on summer albedo — an important factor affecting the region’s hydrology, microbial respiration, and rates of permafrost thaw — and will thus be useful in ecological models, and to validate lower spatial resolution ABoVE remote sensing data products.