Prof. Dr. Martin Kappas earned a German MSc- Geography (six year running program) degree from University of Bonn, Germany in 1989 and a PhD in Environmental Sciences/Climatology from the University of Mannheim in 1993. After his PhD (“summa cum laude”) Martin started a six year running “habilitation” program at the University of Mannheim to obtain the international “venia legendi” for Geography in 1998. Since 2000 Martin has been a University Professor of Geography and the head of the Cartography, GIS and Remote Sensing Section of the Georg-August University of Göttingen.
His Remote Sensing laboratory is a full member of EARSeL (European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories) and takes part as active member of DesertNET (Competence Network for Research to Combat Desertification). Moreover he is a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Sustainable Development (IZNE), the Center of Applied Informatics and the Göttingen International Health Network (GIHN).
His research interests are broad and include topics such as landscape evaluation using techniques of geoinformatics and ground truth data collection (e.g. field spectrometry). His main research theme is the use of remote sensing and GIS to study land cover / land use change and dynamics. He is currently working on diverse interdisciplinary projects in Kazakhstan, Usbeskistan and Mongolia (grassland carbon sequestration and ecological site classification), Africa (LULCC, ecosystem services for food security, health topics), Europe (South France, landscape degradation in the Mediterranean area), Vietnam (land use / land cover change analysis and integrated watershed analysis) and Germany (mapping biomass potentials for future bioenergy use). In 2005 and 2009 Martin was a visiting Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He is a reviewer for the German Science Community (DFG) and the German Humboldt foundation. Martin also serves actively inside various societies such as the German Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and the German International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
Homepage: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/36647.html
Research areas: Remote Sensing & GIS, Climatology, Land Use / Land Cover Change (LULCC), Integrated Watershed Analysis