Dr Ellen Van De Vijver at CERENA

On January the 25^th  CERENA received Dr. Ellen Van De Vijver, from Ghent University who presented the seminar entitled “Managing our land back to the future: making use of the vantage point of geophysics"

Dr Ellen Van De Vijver is co-supervising João Narciso under his PhD work. 

Managing our land back to the future: making use of the vantage point of geophysics

Abstract

Sustainable land management is a critical aspect in tackling the challenges related to urban development and climate change. Geophysical survey methods outcompete conventional invasive sampling methods in time and cost efficiency in providing spatially comprehensive "insight" in subsurface variations. Therefore, they provide interesting tools to use in improving our understanding of prevailing subsurface conditions and their relation to past – natural or anthropogenic – interventions.

The Research Group Soil Spatial Inventory Techniques of the Department of Environment at Ghent University focuses on finding smart ways to use geophysical data and geostatistical methods for the characterization of the near subsurface to understand better our human living environments. Combining expertise from various geo-related disciplines, such as environmental and natural resources engineering, geology, landscape archaeology and geophysics, our team thrives on an integrated and pragmatic approach to the development and implementation of innovative techniques for land inventory and management. Two specific topics being actively researched are the probabilistic processing of electromagnetic data to improve the characterisation of landfills and magnetic mapping of atmospheric particulate matter pollution.