GeoBridge Seminar Schedule
Guest and Talk Details
February
06.02.2026
Guest 1: Dr. Emiel van Loon, from the University of Amsterdam
Dr. Emiel is an Associate Professor of Statistical Ecology specializing in dynamic and machine-learning models for ecological systems. His research uses GPS tracking, weather radar, and virtual navigation experiments to study animal memory, population dynamics, and large-scale bird and rodent movement.
Talk: How to interpret map correlations?
This presentation (the first from 2 in fact) emphasizes the limitations of measures of Association. These limitations apply to any type of data (spatial as well as non-spatial), however there are a number of special issues with spatial data that are often overlooked, especially effects of clustering and spatial autocorrelation, invisibility of orientation and the inversion of relationships with scale conversions. Fortunately there are ways to remediate these problems and design meaningful measures of association - these will be demonstrated in part 2.
Guest 2: Augusto C. Lima, from the University of Bergen
Augusto is an early-career researcher in global climate change at the Department of Biological Sciences, UiB. His research focuses on cryosphere monitoring in mountain ranges, from reconstructing glacier-climate dynamics in paleo time scales to apply Earth Observation and GIS techniques to access present and future glacier behaviour. His work also emphasize open science, interdisciplinary collaboration and educational outreach, such as the GeoBridge community.
Talk: GeoBridge Overview
GeoBridge is both a community and a collaborative platform for students and researchers in all career stages who are interested in the application of Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing to landscape analysis in a changing world. In this presentation, we are going through a brief history of the GeoBridge idealization and concept, our team members and collaborators, our planned events for Spring 2026, our ongoing research projects, and the next steps with GeoBridge. We are also showcasing past and ongoing GIS/RS research from the Mountain in Motions research team, in a way to disseminate UiB research and promote further collaboration between our community.
20.02.2026
Guest 1: Ide Lie-Nilsen, from the University of Bergen
Ida is a PhD candidate in global change ecology at the Department of Biological Science, UiB. Her PhD project will focus on patterns, drivers, and consequences of vegetation change in mountainous ecosystems. She holds a Master of Science in Ecology, with a specialization in ecological resilience. Ida is particularly interested in integrating remote sensing with field-based studies to improve the mapping and understanding of vegetation change in a changing climate.
Talk: Estimating resilience in Norwegian coastal heathland systems
Climate change is driving biodiversity loss and causing shifts in disturbance regimes worldwide. Coastal heathlands, one of Norway’s most vulnerable ecosystems, hold both high cultural and ecological value, yet understanding how they will respond to future changes in climate remains poorly understood. With changing temperature, precipitation and drought patterns forecast for Norway, understanding the vegetation dynamics of coastal heathlands in response to disturbance is essential. Ecological resilience, the capacity of an ecosystem to resist and recover from disturbances, is an important concept for uncovering more about these responses. This study focuses on resilience and recovery rates within three coastal heathland areas over a latitudinal gradient and investigates how temperature and precipitation affect their stability. Using time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at 250m resolution, resilience is quantified by estimating post-disturbance recovery rates.
March
06.03.2026
Guest 1: Dr. Richard Ott, from the University of Amsterdam
Dr. Richard is an Earth Scientist whose research aims to better understand the interactions and feedbacks between the tectonic, climatic, anthropogenic, and biological processes that shape topography. My research focuses on the evolution of erosional landscapes and how geomorphic archives can be used to reconstruct and predict past and future landscape dynamics.
Talk: High-resolution mapping of anthropogenic erosion in the Northern Andes
Humans have markedly changed erosion and river sediment fluxes around the world, but by how much? We usually lack natural erosion rates to quantify the extent of human influence. In this talk, I show how millennial time-scale cosmogenic nuclide measurements can track natural erosion and compare them with estimates of modern sediment yields. I show that erosion and sediment transport rates in Colombia were 78% higher than natural conditions from 1980 to 2000, and increased to 111% above baseline between 2000 and 2022. Our data document a doubling of erosion in the Northern Andes due to the joint effects of agriculture, mining, and deforestation, however, the erosional response to land use change varies is modified by environmental conditions such as rainfall erosivity. Additionally, I’ll showcase my recently developed course on Landscape Dynamics, where students perform a geospatial analysis of a real landscape under natural and human influences conditions.
20.03.2026
Guest 1: Dr. Yifang Shi, from the University of Amsterdam
Dr. Yifang is a remote sensing scientist who has specific expertise in LiDAR and multi-source remote sensing for ecosystem monitoring. Her current research involves ecosystem structural dynamics monitoring using multi-temporal LiDAR data and integrating multi-source remote sensing (e.g. satellite imagery, hyperspectral, LiDAR and RADAR data) for earth observations, such as tree species mapping, plant functional traits retrieving, and animal habitat monitoring. She is also interested in high performance computing using AI for large amounts of remote sensing data on cloud infrastructures.
Talk: Multi-source remote sensing for ecosystem dynamics monitoring
This talk showcases how multi-source remote sensing can assist our understanding of the changing planet. A wide range of data types, tools, and services will be demonstrated for a variety of remote sensing and ecological applications. I will also touch upon the state-of-the-art development (e.g. drone based remote sensing, virtual research environment, deep learning) in remote sensing domain and how it can be used for real-life ecological questions.
Guest 2: Dr. Johannes De Groeve, from the University of Amsterdam
Dr. Johannes De Groeve is a data manager at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) at the University of Amsterdam and part of the Computational Support Unit. He supports researchers in managing, structuring, and analysing ecological and biodiversity data, with a focus on databases, geospatial analysis, and reproducible workflows in R. His work promotes open and standardized data practices that improve transparency, interoperability, and long-term reuse of scientific data. In addition, he develops and teaches workshops on research data management and coding best practices to support more sustainable and reproducible research. He is also the developer of the tabs R package for reconstructing spatial configurations of altitude-bounded biogeographic systems through time.
Talk: Reconstruct the past with TABS (Temporal Altitudinal Biogeographic Shifts)
Environmental change can strongly reshape the spatial configuration of ecosystems. Climate-driven changes in environmental boundaries such as sea level or forest line position can alter the area, connectivity, and isolation of habitats over time, particularly in systems constrained by elevation including island archipelagos, coastal shelves, and alpine environments. In this seminar, I introduce the tabs (Temporal Altitudinal Biogeographic Shifts) R package, an open-source GIS workflow for reconstructing and analysing spatial configurations of altitude-bounded biogeographic systems through time. Tabs enables researchers to model area and connectivity changes under different environmental scenarios, including sea-level fluctuations and forest-line shifts. The workflow is designed to be user-friendly, requiring only a small set of parameters to quickly explore spatial changes across environmental scenarios. The package focuses on standardized spatial outputs in open formats that can be easily integrated with other GIS tools and analytical pipelines. By relying on open-source software and transparent data structures, tabs encourages reproducible research and improves interoperability and reuse of spatial analyses.
April
10.04.2026
Guest 1: Julien Vadnais, from the University of Bergen
Talk: An end-to-end, open-source workflow for automatic mapping with drones
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24.04.2026
Guest 1: Berend-Christiaan Wijers, from the University of Amsterdam
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May
08.05.2026
Guest 1: Dr. Benjamin Robson, from the University of Bergen
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22.05.2026
Guest 1: Hanif Kawousi, from the University of Bergen
Talk: Ground truthing techniques for species distribution maps
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Guest 2: Sjur Barndon, from the University of Bergen
Talk: Spatial overlap quantification
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June
05.06.2026
Guest 1: tbd
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19.06.2026
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