Jonas Franke

Remote Sensing Solutions GmbH | RSSGMBH

Remote sensing has considerable potential for providing accurate, up-to-date information in urban areas. Urban remote sensing is complicated, however, by very high spectral and spatial complexity. In this paper, Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) was applied to map urban land cover using HyMap data acquired over the city of Bonn,...

Grassland is a land cover in the area of conflict between agriculture and conservation, where intensification of land use is a major threat to grassland biodiversity. Grassland use intensity is a key factor for the conservation value of grassland, and detailed spatial data on grassland use intensity is needed to improve strategies for biodiversity...

The Brazilian Cerrado is considered to be the most species-rich savannah region in the world, covering ~2 million km2. Uncontrolled late season fires promote deforestation, produce greenhouse gases (~25% of Brazil's land-use related CO2 emissions between 2003 and 2005) and are a major threat to the conservation of biodiversity in protected areas. G...

The knowledge of tree species distribution at a national scale provides benefits for forest management practices and decision making for site-adapted tree species selection. An accurate assignment of tree species in relation to their location allows conclusions about potential resilience or vulnerability to biotic and abiotic factors. Identifying a...

Wetlands are among the most vulnerable, threatened, valuable, diverse, and heterogeneous ecosystems existing on our planet. While they provide invaluable ecosystem services to our society, they have been declining globally for many centuries. Monitoring of these changes is necessary for implementing efficient conservation policies and sustainable m...

BACKGROUND Even though climate change is one of the most significant global health challenges, empirical population-based data on its impacts and adaptation measures to protect population health are still limited. The 56 long-term health cohorts in Africa and Asia, called Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSSs) are excellent for monitor...

Malaria remains a major health problem predominantly in tropical countries and is still being one of the biggest causes of mortality worldwide. It is an ancient vector borne infectious disease caused by parasitic protozoans of the genus Plasmodium and is transmitted by female mosquitos of the Anopheles species. The spatiotemporal distribution of th...

Climate change, increasing population and changes in land use are all rapidly driving the need to be able to better understand surface water dynamics. The targets set by the United Nations under Sustainable Development Goal 6 in relation to freshwater ecosystems also make accurate surface water monitoring increasingly vital. However, the last decad...

Increasing conflicts between farmers and pastoralists continue to be a major challenge in the Sahel. Political and social factors are in tandem important underlying determinants for conflicts in the region, which are amplified by the variability and scarcity of natural resources, often as a result of climate variability and climate change. This stu...

Wetlands are among the most vulnerable, threatened, valuable, diverse, and heterogeneous ecosystems existing on our planet. While they provide invaluable ecosystem services to our society, they have been declining globally for many centuries. Monitoring of these changes is necessary for implementing efficient conservation policies and sustainable m...

Oceanic islands harbour a disproportionately high number of endemic and threatened species. Rapidly growing human populations and tourism are posing an increasing threat to island biota, yet the ecological consequences of these human land uses on small oceanic island systems have not been quantified. Here, we investigated and compared the impact of...

Wetlands are abundant across the African continent and provide a range of ecosystem services on different scales but are threatened by overuse and degradation. It is essential that national governments enable and ensure the sustainable use of wetland resources to maintain these services in the long run. As informed management decisions require reli...

Oceanic islands harbour a disproportionately high number of endemic and threatened species. Rapidly growing human populations and tourism are posing an increasing threat to island biota, yet the ecological consequences of these human land uses on small oceanic island systems have not been quantified. Here, we investigated and compared the impact of...

Wetlands are the most fragile and threatened ecosystems worldwide, and also one of the most rapidly declining. At the same time wetlands are typically biodiversity hotspots and provide a range of valuable ecosystem services, such as water supply and purification, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and carbon sequestration. Pressure...

Due to high spatiotemporal variability of aquatic systems, relationships between microplastic sources and sinks are highly complex and transportation pathways yet to be understood. Field data acquisitions are a necessary component for monitoring of microplastic contamination but alone cannot capture such complex relationships. Remote sensing is a k...

: Climate change has an increasing impact on food security and child nutrition, particularly among rural smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Their limited resources and rainfall dependent farming practices make them sensitive to climate change-related effects. Data and research linking yield, human health, and nutrition are scarce but can pr...

Call for papers for a special issue of "Remote Sensing" on "Remote Sensing of Plastic Pollution"

Drought adversely affects vegetation conditions and agricultural production and consequently the food security and livelihood situation of the often most vulnerable communities. In spite of recent advances in modeling drought risk and impact, coherent and explicit information on drought hazard, vulnerability and risk is still lacking over wider are...

Due to high spatiotemporal variability of aquatic systems, relationships between microplastic sources and sinks are highly complex and transportation pathways yet to be understood. Field data acquisitions are a necessary component for monitoring of microplastic contamination but alone cannot capture such complex relationships. Remote sensing is a k...

Explicit and large-scale information on farming systems is important for many applications such as crop production estimates, drought impact assessments or water footprint analysis. This contribution investigated the possibility of optimizing harmonic functions fitted to cloud-corrected Landsat NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) time-ser...

Sub-Saharan African (SSA) wetlands are increasingly brought into focus as a possibility to increase food security. Accordingly, agricultural development in Rwanda’s extensive wetland landscapes is strongly promoted. However, agricultural use is a major reason for wetland degradation and often in conflict with conservation efforts. Detailed and up-t...

Microplastic research has mainly concentrated on open seas, while riverine plumes remain largely unexplored despite their hypothesized importance as a microplastic source to coastal waters. This work aimed to model coastal accumulation of microplastic particles (1–5 mm) emitted by the Po River over 1.5 years. We posit that river-induced microplasti...

Energy transition is governed at European and national scale, leading to laws and regulations such as the German EEG or the French LTECV. The implementation of the energy transition in response to these acts is taking place on a regional scale. Regional administrations define their own targets adapted to the local demands and potentials. Regional a...

There is a growing awareness that data obtained from Earth Observation (EO) has the potential to provide the information needed for accurate wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring, and for updating a number of data fields in the Ramsar Sites Information Sheets (RIS). The latter includes: the physical features of the wetland, the presence and...

The DeMo-Wetlands project is funded by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with funds from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Its goal is to demonstrate the potential of current remote sensing tools for supporting international initiatives and conventions by strengthening national capabilities for mapping and monitoring of w...

Schlussbericht (final project report in German language)

Ecosystem services (ES) mapping is becoming mainstream in many sustainability assessments, but its impact on real world decision-making is still limited. Robustness, end-user relevance and transparency have been identified as key attributes needed for effective ES mapping. However, these requirements are not always met due to multiple challenges, r...

Malnutrition remains a leading cause of death in children in low- and middle-income countries. Chronic malnutrition concerns globally approximately 159 million children under the age of five.

Worldwide, 50 million children under five are acutely malnourished, while 16 million amongst them suffer from severe wasting. Chronic malnutrition is more common and accounts for an estimated 159 million children, meaning that approximately 23.8% of all children under five worldwide are stunted. The proportion of stunted children has decreased worl...

Malnutrition remains a leading cause of death in children in low- and middle-income countries; this will be aggravated by climate change. Annually, 6.9 million deaths of children under 5 were attributable directly or indirectly to malnutrition. Although these figures have recently decreased, evidence shows that a world with a medium climate (local...

The study of malaria spatial epidemiology has benefited from recent advances in geographic information system and geostatistical modelling. Significant progress in earth observation technologies has led to the development of moderate, high and very high resolution imagery. Extensive literature exists on the relationship between malaria and environm...

For modelling the spatial distribution of malaria incidence, accurate and detailed information on population size and distribution are of significant importance. Different, global, spatial, standard datasets of population distribution have been developed and are widely used. However, most of them are not up-to-date and the low spatial resolution of...

Many entomological studies have analyzed remotely sensed data to assess the relationship between malaria vector distribution and the associated environmental factors. However, the high cost of remotely sensed products with high spatial resolution has often resulted in analyses being conducted at coarse scales using open-source, archived remotely se...

Malaria affects about half of the world’s population, with the vast majority of cases occuring in Africa. National malaria control programmes aim to reduce the burden of malaria and its negative, socio-economic effects by using various control strategies (e.g. vector control, environmental management and case tracking). Vector control is the most e...

Plenty of publications have documented the impact of plastic debris in marine ecosystems. However, knowledge about sources, sinks and transportation pathways is still scarce. Since July 2013 a German research project aims at expanding this knowledge using a combination of in situ measurements and remote sensing data analysis. Case studies at three...

Tropical peat swamp forests are among the most carbon rich ecosystems and are therefore in the focus of the program Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus (REDD+), which requires accurate aboveground biomass (AGB) estimations for emission assessments. The present study evaluates different SAR frequencies and polarizations...

Die phreatomagmatische Eruption des isländischen Vulkans Eyjafjallajökull im Frühjahr 2010 hatte durch die Beeinträchtigung des europäischen Luftverkehrs einen enormen wirtschaftlichen Schaden verursacht. Basierend auf diesem Ereignis wird im Projekt IsViews (Iceland subglacial Volcanoes interdisciplinary early warning system) der wenige Kilometer...

The alpine ecosystem of the Western Nyainqentanglha region, located in the Central Tibetan Plateau, has experienced a lot of changes in the context of climatic change. The long data record of remote sensing data allowed us to evaluate spatio-temporal change in this remote area. The ecosystem changes of the Western Nyainqentanglha region were detect...

Quantification of tropical forest above-ground biomass (AGB) over large areas as input for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) projects and climate change models is challenging. This is the first study which attempts to estimate AGB and its variability across large areas of tropical lowland forests in Central Kaliman...

The MALAREO Map Atlas contains all map products created in the MALAREO project, which aim at supporting the daily work of the NMCPs in the project area. Based on a variety of thematic maps, the management of integrated vector control, including the planning of indoor residual spraying (IRS), the distribution of insecticide treated nets (ITN) or lar...

Climate change mitigation schemes, such as REDD and biodiversity conservation in tropical rainforests, necessitate remote sensing based forest monitoring capabilities with high spatial resolution and temporal coverage. Regular monitoring has to be capable of detecting rapid changes in forest extent, i.e. deforestation, and subtle changes to the for...

Quantification of tropical forest Above Ground Biomass (AGB) over large areas as input for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) projects and climate change models is challenging. This is the first study which attempts to estimate AGB and its variability across large areas of tropical lowland forests in Central Kaliman...

Climate change mitigation mechanisms, such as REDD+, which aim at avoiding deforestation and forest degradation, require an accurate aboveground biomass (AGB) monitoring. In the present study, multi-temporal X-(TerraSAR-X) and L-band (ALOS PALSAR) SAR data and a multispectral RapidEye image were analyzed for their ability to estimate AGB in a tropi...

In 2008, the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partnership prepared a Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP) in line with the 2010 targets of the UN Secretary General. A global strategy outlined the goal to have a substantial and sustained reduction in the burden of malaria in the near and mid-term (2015), and the eventual global eradication of malaria in the lon...

Remote sensing approaches are of increasing importance for agricultural applications, particularly for the support of selective agricultural measures that increase the productivity of crop stands. In contrast to multi-spectral image data, hyperspectral data has been shown to be highly suitable for the detection of crop growth anomalies, since they...

Management strategies for precision crop protection necessitate spatially and temporally explicit knowledge about crop growth heterogeneity within fields. Remote sensing techniques are appropriate tools for the derivation of relevant crop parameters. However, even for a first discrimination between stressed and productive crop stands, several aspec...

The benefits and limitations of crop stress detection by hyperspectral data analysis have been examined in detail. It could thereby be demonstrated that even a differentiation between healthy and fungal infected wheat stands is possible and profits by analyzing entire spectra or specifically selected spectral bands/ranges. For reasons of practicabi...

Plant diseases are dynamic systems that progress or regress in spatial and temporal dimensions. Site-specific or temporally optimized disease control requires profound knowledge about the development of each stressor. The spatiotemporal dynamics of leaf rust (Puccinia recondite f. sp. tritici) and powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici) i...

Hyperspectral data proved to be highly suitable to identify areas of crop growth anomalies resulting from stress impact (e.g., nitrogen deficiency, fungal infections etc.). Stress symptoms are changes in plant physiology, whose characteristics affect the spectral signature of crop canopies that are consequently detectable via spectral measurements....

Anthropogenic pressure and environmental change processes are key drivers of the recent intensification in the agricultural use of East African wetlands. Land shortage and degradation of upland areas as well as climate change effects turn wetland ecosystems into focal points of production by commercial and traditional users, entailing rapid wetland...

The demand for sensor-based decision support in agriculture is rapidly growing which enhances precision of agricultural management. A fast and precise identification of fungal pathogen infections in crops is essential for the implementation of site-specific fungicide applications. Hyperspectral data collect spectral reflectance in contiguous bands...

The CEFLES2 campaign during the Carbo Europe Regional Experiment Strategy was designed to provide simultaneous airborne measurements of solar induced fluorescence and CO2 fluxes. It was combined with extensive ground-based quantification of leaf- and canopy-level processes in support of ESA's Candidate Earth Explorer Mission of the "Fluorescence Ex...

Plant stresses, in particular fungal diseases, show a high variability in spatial and temporal dimension with respect to their impact on the host. Recent "Precision Agriculture"-techniques allow for a spatially and temporally adjusted pest control that might reduce the amount of cost-intensive and ecologically harmful agrochemicals. Conventional st...