Water is all around us and is vital for all aspects of life. Studying the various compounds and life forms that inhabit natural waters lets us better understand the world around us.

Biodiversity enables ecosystems to thrive through the synergy of functional differences among organisms. While human well-being strongly depends on biodiversity-driven ecosystem services, human actions are also at the root of current unprecedented biodiversity declines.

Food security is challenged by a growing global population and by climate change. Drought and soil salinity are considered the most important ones that inhibit crop yield and distribution. Worryingly, climate change is predicted to increase not only their frequency and severity, but also their co-occurrence,…

Researchers using remote sensing technologies have characterized pre-Columbian regularly-shaped earthworks in forests in Central America and the Amazon. In tropical forested mountains in South America, two challenges arise when identifying archaeological sites through remote sensing. Firstly, sites…

Generally the data from remote sensing surveys - the scanning of the earth by satellite or aircraft in order to obtain information about it - is screened manually in archaeology. However, constant monitoring of the earth's surface causes a huge influx of data of high complexity and high quality. To…

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

The manual analysis of remotely-sensed data is a widespread practice in local and regional scale archaeological research, as well as heritage management.

What workflow of non-destructive techniques provides accurate, valuable data to improve our understanding of Caribbean archaeological landscapes? How were Amerindian settlements configured?

The marine shipping industry is one of the strongest emitters of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a pollutant detrimental to ecology and human health. Over the last 20 years, the pollution produced by power plants, the industry sector, and cars has been decreasing.

A Leiden-Delft-Erasmus research team has been awarded a LDE Global Support Grant to develop reusable algorithms in the remote detection of non-orthogonal architectural features, taking place in the archaeological context of the northern extremities of the Andean, part of the Istmo-Colombian Area.

Promotor: Prof.dr. C.U. Keller, Co-promotor: Dr. ir. Frans Snik

For the past 2 years, Dr Letty ten Harkel has been jointly running an excavation project of a suspected Roman villa site on the Balearic island of Mallorca with colleagues Dr Antoni Puig Palerm and Ritchie Kolvers, MA. The project was recently awarded a LUF Chastelain-Nobach fund to explore the extend…

Studies in current archaeological applications of remote sensing and non-invasive prospection methods edited by Hans Kamermans, Martin Gojda and Axel G.

The Tappino Area Archaeological Project aims to map and analyze ancient settlement patterns and dynamics in a small valley in Central-Southern Italy, in modern Molise (province of Campobasso). The first sites in the area date to the Bronze Age. In the Iron Age to Classical period, it was reportedly…

How did Angkor interact with regional urban centers? How did the settlement system impact the society's agricultural system and regional resilience?

In this project we develop algorithms to automatically detect a particular type of archaeological sites in satellite images of the Alps.

Managing a remote team calls for a different leadership style.

PhD defence

Archaeolandscapes International is an educational and scientific not-for-profit organisation with the objective to promote non-destructive prospecting methods for archaeological investigations.

The main question I want to answer is about the mutual influence between the cultural and settlements changes that occurred between the Bronze and the Early Iron Age in Margiana and the management of water resources.

Assessing the effects of landscape and land-use changes on the visibility of archaeological landscapes in Central-Southern Italy.

PhD defence

Aim: To develop and enable application of a practical, flexible, user-friendly platform to provide the scientific community with a tool to generate land surface products and its associated uncertainties and exploit these for data-intensive science.

On the occasion of the find of Mayan cities in the jungles of Guatemala by means of remote sensing techniques, expert Karsten Lambers was interviewed by De Telegraaf.

Early December, lecturer Joris Timmermans gave the first virtual reality lecture at the Institute of Environmental Sciences. Together with the Centre for Innovation, he developed an innovative teaching method for the master's course Methods in Biodiversity Analysis. The first results look promising.…

Rural cult places were of central importance in the non-urbanised areas of ancient Samnium, in central southern Italy. Their development, roles and functions in ancient society, however, remain important research questions. New excavations at one of these sanctuaries, the rural temple of S. Giovanni…

The team consists of

To deliver a Virtual Sensor tool optimised to exploit the synergy between Sentinels 2 and 3 to allow the consistent retrieval of land surface parameters (Albedo, LAI, and LST); To extend the existing capabilities of land EO data assimilation tools to add capacity to handle data in the thermal domain…

The archaeological heritage of South America is facing increasing threats due to the expansion of agricultural activities, infrastructure expansion, illegal wood harvesting, and the current fire emergency plaguing the Amazon and other biomes of the continent.

In order to optimize treatment, it is necessary to closely monitor and manage the patient’s health status by means of ‘precision diagnostics, personalized prognosis and targeted therapy’. The specialisation combines the techniques and applications of these sensing (monitoring) and stimulation techniques.…

Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September, Burgos, Spain). Volume 7/Sessions A4b and A12

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

‘I was very happy and honoured that my thesis was recognised as a valuable contribution to the topic of landscape archaeology.’