University of Twente (Faculty ITC) in cooperation coordinated a two week (3 – 14 July 2017) summer school which was held in the Bavarian Forest National Park and DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, and was funded by EUFAR.
The summer school offered the 20 PhD students from 15 nationalities working in 10 EU member states the technical skills required for understanding and measuring essential biodiversity variables in forest ecosystem as well as processing of airborne hyperspectral images, thermal images, and LiDAR data for the retrieval of essential biodiversity variables (EBV). Field measurements of EBVs were performed in the first week of the summer school at the Bavarian Forest National Park with the aim to train course participants with in situ data EBV collection as well as field spectroscopy, thermal spectrometry and terrestrial LiDAR for remote sensing of EBVs. Parallel to the acquired measurements an airborne campaign with a NERC Twin Otter was organised with the concurrent acquisitions of hyperspectral imaging data in visible, near-infrared, shortwave infrared as well as thermal-infrared. In the second week of the summer school the participants benefited from lectures by experts attending the ICARE 2017 conference held concurrently at DLR. The students visited the aircraft exhibition show of ICARE 2017 where they were welcomed by the airborne research and operator community.
The organising committee comprised Andrew Skidmore and Roshanak Darvishzadeh (ITC, University Twente), Ils Reusen (VITO), Steffi Holzwarth (DLR) and Marco Heurich (Bavaria Forest National Park).