Thomas Dowling
I am a remote sensing specialist who focuses on the environmental challenges we face today, with a particular interest in the maritime. I started in Physical Geography at Durham (UK), before moving on to a Masters in Environmental Science at Cambridge (UK). Since finishing a PhD in glaciology (Lund, Sweden) I worked in commercial geospatial intelligence, before moving back into academia with a focus on the validation and application of remotely sensed data (land surface temperature) at King’s College London (KCL). These projects involved collaboration with ILRI, NASA-JPL and ESA, working in diverse environments from East Africa to China and across Europe. After KCL I continued work on land surface temperature at the UK's National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO). Most recently I spent time working in the maritime domain before taking up the post of lecturer at the University of Auckland.
Sessions
ORA Reefs aims to restore degraded rocky reef ecosystems across Tīkapa Moana by removing large-scale kina barrens. To support marine habitat identification and monitoring, we are developing a classification pipeline in Python and QGIS. Using the Depth-Invariant Index to isolate seabed reflectance from water column reflectance.