Friday, January 16, 2015

First “cotutelle de thèse”- defense within the DK “GIScience”

On December, 19th, Sebastian d’Oleire-Oltmanns defended his PhD Thesis, entitled “Gully mapping on multiple scales based on UAV and satellite data” successfully at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. 

Since a “cotutelle de thèse” is a bi-lateral doctoral program that is carried out jointly by two international partner universities, the examination committee consisted of Sebastian’s main supervisor in Salzburg, Prof. Blaschke and his supervisors from the University of Frankfurt, Prof. Wunderlich and Dr. Marzolff and Prof. Ries from the University of Trier. Being a member of the DK “GIScience” 

Sebastian additionally presented his research at the University of Salzburg in the framework of the GIScience seminar. After his presentation a lively and challenging discussion examined his major approaches of the research work. More than 30 visitors followed this interesting presentation, and some participants took the chance to actively engage in this discussion. 

During his PhD, Sebastian dealt with methods for gully mapping on two different scales. In addition to the traditional field investigations carried out in geomorphology, remotely sensed data acquired at different scales covered various possibilities to analyze a specific study site, the broader spatial context around this study site (e.g. catchment level) and finally enabled area-wide mapping of gully-affected features. Several workflows were developed and applied: a workflow for photogrammetric processing of Small Format Aerial Photography (SFAP) data, the concept of object-based image analysis (OBIA) was applied at two different (spatial) scale levels for the detection of gullies and gully-affected areas and further analysis of the DSM provided estimations on the total soil loss for a specific gully as well as for the catchment level. 

We wish Sebastian all the best for his future career.

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