The EOSYSTM lab is pleased to announce the successful PhD defence of Thomas Dethinne at the University of Liège on June 15, 2026.

His dissertation, entitled “Improving Representation of Land-Atmosphere Interactions Using Remote Sensing and Climate Models: Insights from Model Coupling and Satellite Data Integration”, addresses one of the major challenges in climate modelling: the representation of land-atmosphere interactions.

The EOSYSTM team warmly congratulates Thomas for this important achievement and wishes him continued success in his future professional endeavours.

On 9–10 June 2026, the FLORES project officially kicked off in Antwerp. The event brought together project partners, members of the steering committee, and representatives from BELSPO for two days of fruitful discussions focused on forest ecophysiology and remote sensing.

The VOD4Forest workshop returns for a 7th edition, and will take place in Belgium on May 12–13, 2026, hosted by the University of Liège. During this two-day workshop we will explore Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD), a key indicator for studying forest ecosystems. The program will include presentations, discussions, and bainstorming sessions on the current applications, emerging research directions and future collaborations

A lab research team member, Jordan Bates, was selected as one of the 50 Geospatial World’s Rising Stars for 2025. 

Geospatial World Rising Stars is an initiative to highlight the outstanding accomplishments of ‘rising’ and ‘rapidly rising’ young individuals who are making significant contributions to global geospatial efforts and technology for society, environment, and the economy

Congratulation to him !

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Kristof Van Oost to our team during his sabbatical!

Prof. Van Oost is Professor at Université Catholique de Louvain, affiliated with the Earth & Life Institute, Faculty of Sciences.

His research focuses on three key areas: (i) Advancing sensing technologies, including drones, to improve data collection, (ii) Understanding fluxes and transformations related to human activities through targeted measurements, and (iii) Integrating these insights into modeling tools, bridging soil-geomorphology interactions with Earth System Models on local to global scales.

We look forward to a productive collaboration!

To wrap up the year on a high note, Pr. François Jonard and Dr. Simon De Canniere had the exciting opportunity to visit the renowned Parsons Lab for Environmental Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This research stay was made possible through a prestigious MIT-MISTI (MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives) grant.

This visit served as a key step in reinforcing the long-term collaboration that began in 2018 between the EOSystM Lab and Prof. Dara Entekhabi’s team at MIT. During their stay, the researchers worked on advancing the use of next-generation remote sensing satellites to monitor Earth's ecosystem health, further bridging the gap between cutting-edge technology and environmental science.

In this video published by the Space4ReLaunch research project, our colleagues Jordan Bates offers an insightful introduction to his work. He explores the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) equipped with hyperspectral and chlorophyll fluorescence sensors to detect and monitor plant water stress. By linking these findings to the future capabilities of Small Satellites (SmallSats), his research aims to advance our ability to monitor and manage water stress on a global scale.

Stay tuned for more videos as the project progresses !

Our team is growing ! We're thrilled to welcome three researchers :

• Jordan Bates is joining us as a post-doc funded by the Win4Relaunch project.
• Cadwal Borremans is joining us as PhD student and teaching assistant on forest monitoring using UAV-LiDAR.
  
• Benjamin Lecart is joining us as a PhD student funded by FNRS on forest fire risk monitoring and prediction.

We're thrilled to announce a Doctoral Scholarship opportunity in remote sensing for plant stress monitoring using thermal infrared and hyperspectral technologies aboard SmallSat and UAV platforms.

A new study on remote sensing of light and water limitation in plant function across global ecosystems conducted by Prof. François Jonard with colleagues from NASA and MIT.

A university team ventures to Alaska, using drones to study the impact of thawing permafrost on climate change in an innovative research expedition.

Chargé de cours dans le domaine des Systèmes d'information géographiques