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Award for accurate eye on Dutch wetlands

July 08, 2005

thumb_Kumar Lalit.jpgDr Lalit Kumar's pioneering work for the Government of The Netherlands on new technology for mapping coastal vegetation has won him an international award.
Dr Kumar is the Director of the Centre for Spatial Sciences at The University of New England. He jointly led a three-year project that has resulted in the adoption by The Netherlands of highly accurate remote-sensing technology to replace aerial photography in the vital monitoring of Holland's coastal wetlands.
Together with his research team in The Netherlands (which included his PhD student Karin Schmidt), he published a paper on the successful project in the leading journal Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (June 2004). The paper won an award, earlier this year, for "an outstanding paper of practical or applied value to the mapping science profession," presented to him and each of his co-authors by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, the world's largest and most highly-regarded society in its field. The project, funded by the Dutch Government, extended through the three years (1998-2002) that Dr Kumar worked at the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation in The Netherlands.
He explained that the remote-sensing technology his research had enabled the Dutch Government to adopt involved "hyperspectral imagery": a narrow-bandwidth analysis of the visual environment that can, for example, distinguish between adjacent plants of similar appearance but different species. "It's a method that's not only accurate, but quick, easy, and repeatable," he said. "Its rapid transfer to practical application was one of the factors that earned us the award."
Dr Kumar moved to Australia in 2002 to take up a position as Senior Lecturer in UNE's School of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resources Management.
Since then, he has helped the University attain a prominent position in the teaching of advanced mapping techniques and the use of those techniques in research. For example, his successful application to the Australian Research Council for a grant of $232,000 has resulted in the recent arrival at UNE of an instrument that will allow him to do work similar to his award-winning research in The Netherlands.


"This places UNE at the forefront of hyperspectral research," he said. "To begin with, it will enable us to enhance projects already under way: mapping Clarence River saltmarshes (in collaboration with the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources) and tracking the spread of lantana in a National Park (in collaboration with the National Parks and Wildlife Service)."
Media contact: Dr Lalit Kumar, School of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resources Management, UNE (02) 6773 5239 or Lydia Roberts, Public Relations Manager, UNE (02) 6773 2779.

Posted by Lydia Roberts at July 8, 2005 09:48 AM