Professor of Physical Geography
Director of the Centre for Landscape and Climate Research
Holder of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

Contact Details

• Tel: 0116 252 3820
• Email: hb91@le.ac.uk
• Fax: 0116 252 3854
• Office: Bennett Building F70

The Centre for Landscape and Climate Research

The Centre for Landscape and Climate Research was one of three new University research centres launched in January 2012. The centres are led by a research professor and aim to establish world class research groups of critical mass at the University of Leicester in selected fields. The Centre for Landscape and Climate Research is pursuing fundamental and applied research to improve our understanding the interactions of the water cycle with ecosystems across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Its research will help solving the problems of global biodiversity loss, water scarcity and flooding, and threats to food security, which are arising from complex interactions between anthropogenic climate change and land use change.
In its first phase, the centre will develop the new research field of Spatial Ecohydrology, which analyses the effects of spatial patterns and processes upon biological populations in the bio-hydro-geochemical systems of evolving three-dimensional landscapes. This new research field draws together Geography, Ecology, Hydrology, Geology, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics and Chemistry with Social Sciences to understand changing landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide. Three developments have created a unique opportunity for research in Spatial Ecohydrology:

1. the availability of increasingly high-resolution satellite images and derived biophysical parameters such as leaf area index, biomass, soil moisture etc. (30 m to 50 km),
2. the increasing spatial resolution of climate models (8-50 km) and
3. decreasing cost of high-performance computing power.

The narrowing gap between observational and modelled data provides an opportunity to exploit their synergies. The centre focuses on methodological aspects of spatial and temporal analysis of ecohydrological systems. It will analyse the significance of spatial location, scale, patchiness and structure for coupled hydro-ecological systems. Geostatistical analysis techniques such as variogram analysis, kriging, spatial point pattern analysis, space-time auto-regressive integrated moving average (STARIMA) models and wavelet analysis will lead to deeper understanding of the impacts of spatial scale and structure on biological population dynamics and water resource availability.

The centre will advance our understanding of a range of ecosystem services, a concept adopted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Table 1). Newly available satellite data from the European GMES programme and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) can be utilised in a rigorous way to quantify and economically value these ecosystem services.

Table 1: Categories and examples of ecosystem services.

Professor Heiko Balzter

My research focuses on contemporary environmental change processes related to climate change and human impacts on biogeochemical cycles and biophysical systems. As a result of a combination of natural and human-induced processes, climate change is occurring at unprecedented speed. Climate change as a global challenge requires a reliable global monitoring and forecasting system to deliver information that policy makers and business leaders can trust. Satellite remote sensing systems are nowadays delivering operational observations from space that have revealed unknown features of Planet Earth. In combination with land surface models of the energy, water and carbon fluxes between land and atmosphere, satellite data provide exciting new insights into forest dynamics, ice sheets, desertification, landform evolution and regional climate change impacts. A key unknown at present is the role of feedbacks between different Earth system components in determining future trajectories of climate change. In order to better understand land/atmosphere interactions, I am pursuing the following research areas:

Remote sensing of forest structure and dynamics

Forest ecosystems play a crucial role in global biogeochemical cycles and in stabilising the climate system. Through heterotrophic and autotrophic respiration and fires they release greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and through photosynthetic carbon sequestration they reduce the atmospheric fraction of carbon dioxide. Deforestation is thought to be a major contributing factor to global anthropogenic carbon emissions. Global initiatives such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) aim to protect forest resources in support of climate mitigation policies. The geographic locations and strengths of global terrestrial carbon sources and sinks and their temporal variability are still subject to much speculation. I have developed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and LIDAR techniques for mapping forest canopy height and forest biomass. I am principal investigator in a range of satellite programmes including TerraSAR-X, Disaster Monitoring Constellation, ENVISAT, ERS-1/2, JERS-1 and ALOS PALSAR.

I am leading the European Centre of Excellence for Earth Observation Research Training “GIONET” (Marie Curie programme, €3,500,000, awarded 2011), which is training 14 researchers over 4 years in land monitoring and emergency information services from space. GIONET will host four summer schools and develop methods for environmental monitoring using space technology. The European initiative “Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES)”, to which GIONET contributes, aims at delivering operational data services from remote sensing and ancillary observing networks. I have had a long-standing involvement in GMES through the projects GEOLAND and GEOLAND2, which are delivering the fast track service for land monitoring. My role here is the derivation of environmental indicators from satellite observations for specific user requirements by the Directorate General AIDCO (Aid and Cooperation) of the European Commission. In the G-STEP partnership (GMES Space and Technology Exchange Partnership) I am pursuing knowledge exchange with industry and businesses. G-STEP places graduates into companies and advises the private sector how to improve business performance using space technology. In the GECA project funded by the European Space Agency I contributed to the development of a generic calibration and validation framework for European remote sensing satellites. The European Space Agency also funded a project on Forest Monitoring in Indonesia, in which I was co-investigator.

Three Key Publications:

Balzter, H., Rowland, C.S., and Saich, P. (2007): Forest canopy height and carbon estimation at Monks Wood National Nature Reserve, UK,  using dual-wavelength SAR interferometry, Remote Sensing of Environment, 108, 224-239

Balzter, H., Skinner, L., Luckman, A., and Brooke, R. (2003): Estimation of tree growth in a conifer plantation over nineteen years from multi-satellite L-band SAR. Remote Sensing of Environment 84, 184-191

Balzter, H., Talmon, E., Wagner, W., Gaveau, D., Plummer, S., Yu, J.J., Quegan, S., Davidson, M., Le Toan, T., Gluck, M., Shvidenko, A., Nilsson, S., Tansey, K., Luckman, A. and Schmullius, C. (2002): Accuracy assessment of a large-scale forest map of Central Siberia from Synthetic Aperture Radar. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 28, 719-737

Land/atmosphere interactions

As co-investigator in the NERC Climate and Land Surface Systems Interaction Centre (CLASSIC) I studied the role of land surface heterogeneity in land surface/climate systems using the Hadley Centre’s land surface model JULES and remote sensing data. The overarching idea was to use remotely sensed images to quantify the sub-grid scale heterogeneity of biophysical properties of the land surface and develop ways of representing it in climate models of coarser scale. This strand of my research resulted in a statistical fire model using Bayesian statistics (Jupp et al. 2006) and a cellular automaton model of forest fires that I also use in my teaching. An analysis of continental-scale vegetation phenology data (fraction of absorbed photosynthetic radiation, fAPAR) over 20 years showed for the first time that the Arctic Oscillation is likely to influence not only the fire regime but also the timing of vegetation greening and senescence in Siberia (Balzter et al. 2007a). More recently a PhD student and I have shown how data assimilation of land surface temperature from the SEVIRI instrument into the land surface model JULES can improve the quantification of water and energy fluxes in African savannahs (Ghent et al. 2010). This is the first data assimilation study of land surface temperature data into a land surface model and has generated great interest by the Met Office. This work won the Best Paper Award at the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society Conference 2009 (Ghent et al. 2009).

Three Key Publications:

Balzter, H., Gerard, F., Weedon, G., Grey, W., Combal, B., Bartholome, E., Bartalev, S. and Los, S. (2007):  Coupling of vegetation growing season anomalies with hemispheric and regional scale climate patterns in Central and East Siberia, Journal of Climate 20:15, 3713–3729

Balzter, H., Gerard, F.F., George, C.T., Rowland, C.S., Jupp, T.E., McCallum, I., Shvidenko, A., Nilsson, S., Sukhinin, A., Onuchin, A. and Schmullius, C. (2005): Impact of the Arctic Oscillation pattern on interannual forest fire variability in Central Siberia, Geophysical Research Letters 32, L14709.1-L14709.4

Ghent, D., Kaduk, J. Remedios, J., Ardö, J. and Balzter, H. (2010):  Assimilation of land-surface temperature into the land surface model JULES with an Ensemble Kalman Filter. Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres 115, D19112

The role of fire in biogeochemical cycles

Vegetation fires are prevalent in all major ecosystems where fuel moisture content reaches critically low levels at some point of the year and where humans are present. Globally, fires interact with the climate system through the release of carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide and non-carbon greenhouse gases and aerosols. Climate change is expected to lead to geographically differentiated temperature and precipitation changes, which in turn influence vegetation growth (and hence fuel mass) and fuel moisture, leading to shifts in the fire regime. Globally, the magnitude of gas and aerosol emissions from wildfires is still debated. Remote sensing can play a significant role in clarifying the role of fire in the Earth system, and help constrain fire models. In the EU project SIBERIA-2 I have contributed to a pioneering approach for a multi-sensor Earth Observation concept for full greenhouse gas accounting over 3 million km2 of Central Siberia using a GIS framework. The characterisation of over a decade of forest fires in Siberia led to a better quantitative understanding of the fire regime, and won the Best Poster Award at the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society Conference 2004 (Balzter et al. 2004). Burned forest area was shown to be correlated to a hemispheric climate pattern, the Arctic Oscillation (Balzter et al. 2005), as well as regional early summer rainfall anomalies (Jupp et al. 2006) and regional soil moisture anomalies detected from passive microwave remote sensing (Bartsch et al. 2009). My Siberia research has led to the publication of an edited book (Balzter 2010) and several new research grants, including a NERC grant to quantify “Forest fire intensity dynamics” and an EU-INTAS project (SibFORD) to develop bottom-up forest inventory derived carbon emission estimates from fire. Research into the temporal seasonality of vegetation phenology over Siberian fire scars resulted in quantitative knowledge of post-fire vegetation dynamics and recovery (Cuevas-Gonzalez et al. 2008, 2009).

In the EU project CARBOAFRICA I have studied the African fire regime, using MODIS burned area data at 500 m scale and the dynamic fire model SPITFIRE, which is coupled to the vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. This work has led to improved greenhouse gas emission estimates from a combined fire/dynamic vegetation model forced with satellite-derived burned area data (Lehsten et al. 2009). CARBOAFRICA was awarded the Italian WWF (World Wildlife Fund for Nature) prize for scientific research in 2009. A Royal Society grant helped establish a bilateral partnership between my group and the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, investigating fire and vegetation structure in the savannahs of the Kruger National Park. In the context of CARBOAFRICA I hosted a training event for African professionals on the use of satellite burned area data in national greenhouse gas accounts.

Three Key Publications:

Balzter, H., Tansey, K., Kaduk, J., George, C., Gerard, F., Cuevas Gonzalez, M., Sukhinin, A. and Ponomarev, E. (2010): Fire/Climate Interactions in Siberia. In: Balzter, H. (Ed.): Environmental Change in Siberia - Earth Observation, Field Studies and Modelling. Series “Advances in Global Change Research”, Vol. 40, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 21-36. Available here.

Cuevas-González, M., Gerard, F., Balzter, H. and Riaño, D. (2009): Analysing forest recovery after wildfire disturbance in boreal Siberia using remotely sensed vegetation indices, Global Change Biology, Special issue "Fire Ecology and Climate Change", 15:3, 561-577

Lehsten, V., Tansey, K.J., Balzter, H., Thonicke, K., Spessa, A., Weber, U., Smith, B., Arneth, A. (2009): Estimating carbon emissions from African wildfires. Biogeosciences, 6, 349–360

External Activities

I am a member of the editorial board of the journals “Remote Sensing “Earth Science and Climatic Change”.
I am an invited member of the GOFC-GOLD Working Group on Biomass. In 2009 I was invited to serve on the European Science Foundation’s European Space Sciences Committee, which investigates and presents the views of the space research community and participates in several advisory committees of the Europan Space Agency. Since 2005 I have been advising the Royal Society’s Global Environment Committee on international environmental research issues as an elected member of the UK International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) National Committee. I serve on the AATSR Science Advisory Group, and have provided scientific advice to the Eliasch review on “Climate Change: Financing Global Forests”.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a member of the American Geophysical Union, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and member of the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society as well as the Chartered Management Institute.

PhD Supervision

Current

• Paul Arellano - Detecting hydrocarbon seepages and areas polluted by petroleum in the Ecuadorean Amazon tropical rainforest from satellite (with Kevin Tansey)
• Maria Cuevas Gonzalez (at University of Alcalá, Spain) - 'Post-disturbance vegetation dynamics in Central Siberian forest fire scars'.
• Othman El-Shakmak – ‘Synthetic Aperture Radar remote sensing of forests in Libya’ (with Dr. Claire Jarvis)
• Umar Bibi – ‘Evaluating the impact of future oil exploitation in the North-Eastern Region of Nigeria using GIS and land surface modelling’ (with Dr Jörg Kaduk)
• Ehsan Khalefa –'Remote Sensing of savanna landscape structure using the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System' (with Lex Comber)
• Andrea Hurtado Mendoza-Rosales - Determining the effect of plant carbon allocation on the Climate–Carbon Cycle Feedback through variational Data Assimilation (with Jörg Kaduk)
• Ross Morrison – ‘Carbon fluxes from a regenerating fenland in Cambridgeshire - FENFLUX’ (with Dr Jörg Kaduk and Dr Sue Page)
• Narissara Nuthammachot - Deforestation monitoring in Thailand (with Kevin Tansey)
• Gong Pan - Methane and carbon dioxide fluxes from a regenerating fenland in Cambridgeshire - FENFLUX (with Jörg Kaduk and Sue Page)
• Prem Pandey - Detecting and analysing the spread of exotic Acacias in West-Mediterranean biodiverse costal dunes with hyperspectral images and LiDAR (with Nick Tate)
• Pedro Rodríguez Veiga - Global biomass information system (with Kevin Tansey)
• Dimitris Stratoulias (Tihany) - Dynamics and conservation ecology of emergent and submerged macrophytes in Lake Balaton using airborne remote sensing (with BLRI)
• Lorraine Tighe (at University of Ottawa, Canada) – ‘Empirical assessment of commercial X/C/L-HH Band InSAR elevation data: Implications for canopy height mapping’
• James Wheeler - Forest Monitoring of the Congo Basin using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) - (with Kevin Tansey)

Completed

• Bashar Dahdal - 'The use of interferometric spaceborne radar and GIS to measure ground subsidence from peat soils in Indonesia' (with Dr Kevin Tansey and Dr Sue Page).
• Darren Ghent – ‘Land-surface modelling and Earth observation of fire/climate interactions’(with Dr Jörg Kaduk and Dr John Remedios)
• Daniel Smith - ‘Soil respiration in a fire scar chronosequence of Canadian boreal jack pine forest’ (with Dr Jörg Kaduk).
• Laine Skinner (at Swansea) – ‘Estimating forest parameters from Synthetic Aperture Radar: A case study of Thetford Forest’

Research Areas for PhD Supervision:

Spatial Ecohydrology, Remote sensing of forests to support the REDD initiative on Reducing Deforestation and Degradation; LiDAR and radar remote sensing; Fire/vegetation dynamics in African savannahs

• Physical Geography Research Themes

Enquiries: If you are interested in studying for a PhD in one of these research areas, please make informal enquiries via geogPhD@le.ac.uk

Most Recent Publications

Tighe, M. L., King, D., Balzter, H., Bannari, A. and McNairn, H. (in press): Feasibility of X-HH InSAR Data to Derive High-resolution Vegetation Cover Maps and Canopy Height, Remote Sensing of Environment, Special Issue

Ghent, D., Kaduk, J., Remedios, J. and Balzter, H. (2011): Data assimilation into land surface models: the implications for climate feedbacks. International Journal of Remote Sensing 32, 617-632, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/01431161.2010.517794

Le Toan, T., Quegan, S., Davidson, M., Balzter, H., Paillou, P., Papathanassiou, K., Plummer, S., Rocca, F., Saatchi, S., Shugart, H. and Ulander, L. (2011): The BIOMASS Mission: Mapping global forest biomass to better understand the terrestrial carbon cycle, Remote Sensing of Environment, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425711001362

Full listing of publications