Sander Mucher

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at Wageningen University & Research

This study aims to explore body weight estimation for cattle in both standing and lying postures, using 3D data. We apply a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-based (UAV-based) LiDAR system to collect data during routine resting periods between feedings in the natural husbandry conditions of a commercial farm, which ensures minimal interruption to the animals...

This report highlights the massive urbanisation of Aruba in recent decades. Aruba is rich in natural terrestrial ecosystems that range from dry tropical forest, caves and beaches to salt lakes and mangroves. The interaction of natural ecosystems with human activities is reflected in the land cover. Understanding current land cover and how the land...

2024. Western Wetlands of Aruba; Baseline study of the pressures, threats and biodiversity values of the (former) saliñas at Bubali, Palm Beach, Cerca, Malmok, and Druif. Wageningen, Wageningen Environmental Research, Report 3380. 66 pp.; 25 fig.; 3 tab.; 42 ref. De Western Wetlands (392 ha) bestaan uit vijf (voormalige) saliñas langs de noordwestk...

Effective segmentation of individual animals is crucial for monitoring cattle growth in precision livestock farming(PLF) when employing computer vision (CV) on 2D images or videos. However, similar research in 3D scenes has been an area with limited prior exploration. This study applied three-dimensional (3D) CV approaches in conjunction with a UAV...

Accurate body measurements are crucial for effective management of cattle growth in precision livestock farming. This study introduces a novel noncontact approach that leverages point clouds acquired by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based LiDAR to obtain body measurements of cattle within their natural husbandry conditions. The experiment encompass...

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) represent an important tool to characterize vegetation patterns and processes. Their ultrahigh resolution and flexibility may help to bridge the gap between field and satellite remote sensing data. UASs can address a variety of fields, ranging from biodiversity mapping and monitoring through the assessment of ecosyste...

Precision agriculture has drawn much attention in the last few years because of the benefits it has on reducing farming costs while maximizing the harvest obtained. Yield prediction is of importance for farmers to fertilize accordingly to reach the potential yield. However, this task is still relying on manual work, which is expensive and time-cons...

Analyzing the dominant forms and extent of land cover changes in the Mount Elgon region is important for tracking conservation efforts and sustainable land management. Mount Elgon’s rugged terrain limits the monitoring of these changes over large areas. This study used multitemporal satellite imagery to analyze and quantify the land cover changes i...

Nature conservation policies require up-to-date and accurate biodiversity monitoring. Innovative synoptic information products such as Remote Sensing-enabled Essential Biodiversity Variables (RS-enabled EBVs) could complement field observations in biodiversity monitoring. It is not clear however, how these scientific remote sensing products can be...

Monitoring global biodiversity from space through remotely sensing geospatial patterns has high potential to add to our knowledge acquired by field observation. Although a framework of essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) is emerging for monitoring biodiversity, its poor alignment with remote sensing products hinders interpolation between field...

Knowing before harvesting how many plants have emerged and how they are growing is key in optimizing labour and efficient use of resources. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are a useful tool for fast and cost efficient data acquisition. However, imagery need to be converted into operational spatial products that can be further used by crop producers...

Accurate measurement of canopy chlorophyll content (CCC) is essential for the understanding of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics through monitoring and evaluating properties such as carbon and water flux, productivity, light use efficiency as well as nutritional and environmental stresses. Information on the amount and distribution of CCC helps to ass...

Habitats are important indicators of biodiversity in their own right, as well as being linked to species, hence their widespread use in reporting on nature conservation planning and policy. For reporting consistent mapping and monitoring habitat extent and change is important. Remote Sensing techniques are becoming an important tool for this. In th...

Supporting Information for the manuscript entitled: “SegOptim – a R package for optimizing object-based image analyses of high-spatial resolution remotely-sensed data” (2019) authored by: Gonçalves, J., Pôças, I., Marcos, B., Mücher, C.A., and Honrado, J.P., International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 76: 218-230 This in...

Crop breeding consists of the process of editing crop genetic profile for increasing many crop quality. In order to achieve optimal results crop breeders have to plant thousands of plants and keep track of their growth almost daily. This process requires increased man-hour inspection over large fields which results in poor accuracy due to human fat...

Small islands face various problems hampering sustainable development. Competition for space (land and water) and resources (water, energy, food) leads to various kinds of conflicts that put pressures on ecosystems and not seldom results in ecosystem degradation and lower resilience. This jeopardizes ecosystem functions and thus ecosystem services....

Small islands face various problems hampering sustainable development. Competition for space (land and water) and resources (water, energy, food) leads to various kinds of conflicts that put pressures on ecosystems and not seldom results in ecosystem degradation and lower resilience. This jeopardizes ecosystem functions and thus ecosystem services....

Following global trends in population growth, urbanization and rising living standards, the global demand for water, food and energy is rapidly increasing. Meeting this surge of demand poses heavy pressures on existing water, food and energy systems. Typically these have already been constrained due to the competing needs for limited resources in m...

Regular mapping of vegetation structure is important for biodiversity monitoring, and increasingly for tracking compliance with nature policy mandates. As such, the Netherlands uses vegetation structure mapping to monitor the Natura 2000 site on the Dutch Wadden Sea island of Ameland. Three decades of natural gas extraction here has caused soil sub...

Geographic Object-based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) is increasingly used to process high-spatial resolution imagery, with applications ranging from single species detection to habitat and land cover mapping. Image segmentation plays a key role in GEOBIA workflows, allowing to partition images into homogenous and mutually exclusive regions. Nonetheless,...

Global and regional scale agricultural monitoring systems aim to provide up-to-date information regarding food production to different actors and decision makers in support of global and national food security. To help reduce price volatility of the kind experienced between 2007 and 2011, a global system of agricultural monitoring systems is needed...

In MAGIC a first EU wide map is created to assess options for sustainably use of marginal lands to grow industrial crops. The approach builds on the JRC work to identify Areas of Natural Constraints (ANCs) (Van Oorschoven et al., 2014 and Terres et al., 2014) and other land evaluation systems for agronomic suitability. The results describe the loca...

Appropriate management of (semi-)natural areas requires detailed knowledge of the ecosystems present and their status. Remote sensing can provide a systematic, synoptic view at regular time intervals, and is therefore often suggested as a powerful tool to assist with the mapping and monitoring of protected habitats and vegetation. In this study, we...

The chapter discusses the potential use of passive optical sensors, RADAR and LiDAR technology for measuring vegetation height to support the monitoring of the EBV "ecosystem structure."

The Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) concept proposed by GEO BON, Space Agencies, and the Earth Observation research community at large aims to support efforts for biodiversity monitoring. GOFC-GOLD and GEO BON propose a new sourcebook to promote the best operational monitoring practices for the relevant EBVs based on scientific literature, a...

Authors In addition to the core editors, a number of international experts in remote sensing, and biodiversity field measurement have contributed to the development of the Sourcebook and are thankfully acknowledged for their support. This Sourcebook is the result of a joint voluntary effort from more than 70 contributing authors from different inst...

Although satellite-based variables have for long been expected to be key components to a unified and global biodiversity monitoring strategy, a definitive and agreed list of these variables still remains elusive. The growth of interest in biodiversity variables observable from space has been partly underpinned by the development of the essential bi...

The WUR Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing Facility (UARSF) (www.wageningenur.nl/uarsf ) is a co-operation organization of different groups within Wageningen University and Research Centre to use UAVs in remote sensing applications. The facility was founded in 2012. Since then the facility has taken part in numerous of mapping campaigns exploiting UAVs...

AimThe rate of climate change might exceed the migration capacity of plants, particularly where habitats became fragmented by human land use. Except for some tree species, the extent to which habitat fragmentation decreases migration rates has nevertheless been little evaluated. Here, we compare simulated migration rates of understorey herbs, which...

Ecologists and space agencies must forge a global monitoring strategy, say Andrew K. Skidmore, Nathalie Pettorelli and colleagues.

Vegetation height is a crucial factor in environmental studies, landscape analysis, and mapping applications. Its estimation may prove cost and resource demanding, e.g., employing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data. This study presents a cost-effective framework for height estimation, built around texture analysis of a single very high-resolu...

To support decisions relating to the use and conservation of protected areas and surrounds, the EU-funded BIOdiversity multi-SOurce monitoring System: from Space TO Species (BIO_SOS) project has developed the Earth Observation Data for HAbitat Monitoring (EODHaM) system for consistent mapping and monitoring of biodiversity. The EODHaM approach has...

To support decisions relating to the use and conservation of protected areas and surrounds, the EU-funded BIOdiversity multi-SOurce monitoring System: from Space TO Species (BIO_SOS) project has developed the Earth Observation Data for HAbitat Monitoring (EODHaM) system for consistent mapping and monitoring of biodiversity. The EODHaM approach has...

Monitoring biodiversity at the level of habitats and landscape is becoming widespread in Europe and elsewhere as countries establish international and national habitat conservation policies and monitoring systems. Earth Observation (EO) data offers a potential solution to long-term biodiversity monitoring through direct mapping of habitats or by in...

Land Surface Phenology (LSP) is the most direct representation of intra-annual dynamics of vegetated land surfaces as observed from satellite imagery. LSP plays a key role in characterizing land-surface fluxes, and is central to accurately parameterizing terrestrial biosphere-atmosphere interactions, as well as climate models. In this paper we pres...

At the local spatial scale, land-use variables are often employed as predictors for ecological niche models (ENMs). Remote sensing can provide additional synoptic information describing vegetation structure in detail. However, there is limited knowledge on which environmental variables and how many of them should be used to calibrate ENMs. We used...

Alterra is part of the international expertise organisation Wageningen UR (University & Research centre). Our mission is 'To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life'. Within Wageningen UR, nine research institutes – both specialised and applied – have joined forces with Wageningen University and Van Hall Larenstein University...

Monitoring land cover and habitat change is a key issue for conservation managers because of its poten-tial negative impact on biodiversity. The Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) and the General Habitat Categories (GHC) System have been proposed by the remote sensing and ecological research community, respectively, for the classification of l...

To quantify potential nitrogen (N) deposition impacts on peatland carbon (C) uptake, we explored temporal and spatial trends in N deposition and climate impacts on the production of the key peat forming functional group (Sphagnum mosses) across European peatlands for the period 1900-2050. Using a modelling approach we estimated that between 1900 an...

AHN-2 bevat zeer gedetailleerde hoogte informatie van geheel Nederland. Deze informatie is heel goed bruikbaar voor toepassingen in ruimte- en milieu onderzoek. Helaas is het AHN-2 niet geheel vlakdekkend, namelijk op locaties waar geen hoogtemetingen beschikbaar zijn bevat het AHN-2 geen hoogtegegevens. Dit was de aanleiding voor Alterra om een vl...

Met informatie uit ruimtelijke databases is een generieke methodiek ontwikkeld, waarmee de ruimtelijke verspreiding van plantengemeenschappen in Nederland door middel van statistische modellering kan worden voorspeld en vlakdekkend kunnen worden voorspeld uit digitale bestanden (topografie, bodem, landgebruik en hoogtemodellen), en waarmee de nauwk...

De BES eilanden behoren sinds oktober 2010 tot de Nederlandse gemeenten. Het opstellen van natuurbeleidsplannen behoren tot de nieuwe taken. Gedetailleerde hoogtekaarten zijn daarbij van belang. Met name voor Saba en St. Eustatius, met een zeer gevarieerd en complex reliëf, zijn accurate hoogtekaarten van groot belang.

Very high resolution aerial images and LiDAR (AHN2) datasets with a national coverage provide opportunities to produce vegetation maps automatically. As such the entire area of the river floodplains in the Netherlands may be mapped with high accuracy and regular updates, capturing the dynamic state of the vegetation. In this study, these fused data...

Understanding which environmental conditions are critical for species survival is a critical, ongoing question in ecology. These conditions can range from climate, at the broadest scale, through to elevation and other local landscape conditions, to fine scale landscape patterns of land cover and use. Remote sensing is an ideal technology to monitor...

Earth Observation (EO) images have been extensively used to provide a synoptic view of land cover/use (LC/LU) patterns and land cover/use changes. Land covers are not as clearly relatable to biodiversity in comparison to habitat classifications which can provide more scope for biodiversity monitoring. The main purpose of the paper is to provide an...

As part of the Biodiversity Multi-Source Monitoring System (BIO_SOS), a new approach to the classification of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) classes from very high resolution (VHR) remote sensing data has been developed. These classes are also translated to General Habitat Categories (GHCs). Example...

Periodic monitoring of biodiversity changes at a landscape scale constitutes a key issue for conservation managers. Earth observation (EO) data offer a potential solution, through direct or indirect mapping of species or habitats. Most national and international programs rely on the use of land cover (LC) and/or land use (LU) classification systems...

The present study examines the possibility to identify the different land cover types (natural and artificial) on very high resolution satellite images of the Caribbean islands Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius. Linking species habitat requirements with associated land cover types allows for the identification of their potential occurence on the isla...

Monitoring the conservation status of natural habitats is an essential aspect of effective conservation management. Not only data on habitat occurrence are needed, but also detailed information on the structural and functional characteristics of the habitat patches is crucial for an adequate conservation status assessment. Classification of hypersp...

Deliverable 5.2 (D5.2), entitled “Habitat Maps from Very High Resolution (VHR) imagery” is a deliverable of WP5 and focuses on the production of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Land Cover Classification Systems (LCCS) maps from very high resolution (VHR) spaceborne optical remote sensing data, primarily Worldview and Quickbird, and their t...

The spatial configuration of agricultural systems is continuously changing in response to changes in demand for agricultural goods, changes in the level of competition between different land use activities, and progress in agricultural technology. This may lead to a change in the location of agricultural systems and consequently to a change in thei...

A range of new spatial datasets classifying the European environment has been constructed over the last few years. These datasets share the common objective of dividing European environmental gradients into convenient units, within which objects and variables of interest have relatively homogeneous characteristics. The stratifications and typologie...

Monitoring and reporting on the state of nature gained increasing importance in the European Union with the implementation of the Habitats Directive and the Natura 2000 network. Reporting habitat conservation status requires detailed knowledge on many aspects of habitats at different spatial levels. Remote sensing is recognised as a powerful tool t...

In this paper we describe how historical land use information has been derived for the whole of Europe, using the World Atlas of Agriculture, scale 1: 2,500,000. This paper describes the process of converting the analog land-use maps to a digital European historical land-use database, the Historical Land Use Database 1960 (HISLU60). The processing...

This chapter concludes that, in combination with additional environmental data sets, it is now possible to model quantitatively the spatial extent of widespread habitats and landscapes on the basis of land cover information derived from satellite imagery. Although it is now possible to model the spatial extent of widespread European habitats, these...

In the last decades, sustainable development has been acknowledged to be of major importance in the European Union for the future, leading to numerous Commission Strategies and Action Plans (amongst others CEC, 2001, 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2007). Sustainability Impact Assessment is one option to convert policies into operational approaches.

Natura 2000, an EU-wide network of nature protection areas, has as main objective the achievement or maintenance of a favorable conservation status of habitats protected by the EU Habitats directives. Within this framework, this study examines a strategy to characterize the status of heathland vegetation from airborne hyperspectral AHS data in the...

BIOPRESS (‘Linking Pan-European Land Cover Change to Pressures on Biodiversity’), a European Commission funded ‘Global Monitoring for Environment and Security’ project, produced land cover change information (1950—2000) for Europe from aerial photographs and tested the suitability of this for monitoring habitats and biodiversity. The methods and re...

We have developed a new hierarchical European Landscape Classification that can be used as a framework for, e.g., indicator reporting and environmental sampling. Landscapes are ecological meaningful units where many processes and components interact. And as such, landscapes themselves have resulted from long-term interactions of natural abiotic, bi...

European landscapes have been shaped over the centuries by processes related to human land use, which are reflected in regionally distinct landscape patterns. Since landscape pattern has been linked to biodiversity and other ecological values of the landscapes, this paper explores landscape pattern as a tool for ecological sustainability assessment...

Straightforward mapping of detailed heathland habitat patches and their quality using remote sensing is hampered by (1) the intrinsic property of a high heterogeneity in habitat species composition (i.e. high intra-variability), and (2) the occurrence of the same species in multiple habitat types (i.e. low inter-variability). Mapping accuracy of de...

Habitat monitoring of designated areas under the EU Habitats Directive requires every 6 years information on area, range, structure and function for the protected (Annex I) habitat types. First results from studies on heathland areas in Belgium and the Netherlands show that hyperspectral imagery can be an important source of information to assist t...

Straightforward mapping of detailed heathland habitat patches and their quality using remote sensing is hampered by (1) the intrinsic property of a high heterogeneity in habitat species composition (i.e. high intra-variability), and (2) the occurrence of the same species in multiple habitat types (i.e. low inter-variability). Mapping accuracy of de...

specific species, the biodiversity values of agricultural land can differ substantially across Europe. From the policy perspective, high nature value agricultural landscapes are of large interest in the framework of agri-environmental measures and rural development objectives. This project aims at developing a new indicator for high nature value fa...

The development of a Pan-European Ecological Network is nowwidely recognised as an important policy initiative in support of protected Natura 2000 sites. The site selection is based on habitats as defined in the Annex I of the Habitats Directive. Whilst there is information about the presence of these habitats in Natura 2000 sites, there is no deta...

Remote sensing as a tool for Natura 2000 habitat monitoring: a need for clear user requirements

Changes in the length of the growing season as a result of climate change, have raised many questions about the effects on plant and animal populations. Using Remote Sensing, analysis of Vegetation Index (VI) time-series can help to understand the behavior of plant phenology through the years. Large datasets of satellite images are available to stu...

In compliance with the Habitats Directive of 1992, all European member states are obliged to report about the conservation status of a range of Natura 2000 protected habitat types to the European Union every 6 years. Up till now, the assessment of the status of these habitats is still being performed based solely on intensive, time-consuming and ex...

Habitat monitoring of designated areas under the EU Habitats Directive requires every 6 years spatially explicit information on area, range, structure and function for the protected (Annex I) habitat types. Hyperspectral remote sensing could be an important technique to assist in the evaluation of the habitat conservation status by providing contin...

The GlobCover project supported by ESA has developed an operational service dedicated to the generation of global land cover maps through an automated classification of MERIS FRS time series. This paper reports the independent accuracy assessment of the global GlobCover product as the first global exercise implemented according to the CEOS Land Pro...

De belangrijkste doelstelling van dit proefschrift is het ontwikkelen van methoden voor het kwantificeren van de ruimtelijke verspreiding en omvang van Europese landschappen en habitats en hun monitoring. In een bredere context gaat het om monitoring van de biodiversiteit met behulp van remote sensing bestaande uit het analyseren van satellietbeeld...