Professor Arnold Dekker: aquatic remote sensing

Professor Arnold Dekker is leading aquatic remote sensing research and applications development for adaptive management of these important environmental resources.

• 6 October 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements
• Professional activities

Current activities

Professor Arnold Dekker leads the aquatic earth observation research team within the Environmental Earth Observation research group which is part of the Environmental Observation and Landscape Science research program.

The aquatic remote sensing group consists of staff with skills in aquatic resource remote sensing. It has access to the full range of remote sensors from 'standard' Quickbird to MODIS type sensors to the most advanced hyperspectral spaceborne sensors.

Professor Dekker is an international and national leader in defining methods for operationalising remote sensing of aquatic ecosystems.

He has led major research projects for the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Coastal Zone, Estuary and Waterway Management, The Reef CRC, Wealth From Oceans Flagship Program and National Land and Water Resources Audit.

Research topics of special interest have included:

• developing and operationalising  remote sensing algorithms for unravelling the complex composition of coastal waters that vary from fine suspended sediment laden tropical rivers or dissolved organic matter rich temperate waters to clear oceanic waters
• using physics-based inversion methods for assessing bathymetry, water column composition and benthic habitat cover types using high spatial and spectral resolution remote sensing data.

Background

Professor Arnold Dekker’s work focuses on aquatic biogeochemical physical processes at an aquatic ecosystem scale, suited for management of the resource, or for integration into predictive and/or hind-casting models.

His expertise developed from studying earth observation of hypertrophic inland waters, eutrophic coastal waters in Europe, coastal benthic habitats in Australia, complex tropical to temperate coastal waters and oceanic reef systems in Australia.

Academic qualifications

Professor Dekker has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science, Physical Geography, from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1980
• Master of Science, Quaternary Geology, from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1986
• Doctor of Philosophy, Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Inland Water Quality, from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1993
• Honorary Professorship at the University of Queensland in 2009.

Achievements

Professor Dekker is the author of 22 journal articles, 41 reports, 10 book chapters and 46 conference papers.

Professor Dekker has led the CSIRO Environmental Earth Observation (EEO) Research Group (21 staff) from 2002-05 and 2008-09, the largest multi-disciplinary remote sensing group in Australia.

The EEO Research Group leads the way in developing physics-based satellite data inversion methods for both aquatic (water column and habitat) and terrestrial (vegetation, land-cover and hydrology) environments to simultaneously estimate and optimise all measureable environmental variables through state-of-the-art model-data fusion (also referred to as data-assimilation).

The research contributed to the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship multiple CSIRO award winning Murray Darling Sustainable Yields Project as well as to new insights into water quality (river flood plume) knowledge for the Great Barrier Reef.

Professor Dekker organised the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) project to create the first Southern Hemisphere Coastal Ocean Optical Observatory. This provided essential calibration and validation data for current and future ocean and coastal satellite programs of the European Space Agency, The Indian Space Research Organisation and NASA (letters of recognition received).

Professor Dekker has set international earth observation agendas as co-chair for Group on Earth Observations (GEO - 80 member states - in the Inland and Coastal Water Working Group), the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS - 54 member states, in the Imaging Spectrometry Working Group) and the International Working Group on Hyperspectral Satellites (ISIS).

In relevant earth observation areas Professor Dekker has enhanced and formalised collaborations with eminent science organisations (e.g. National Research Institute of Italy, Office of Naval Research (USA), NASA, ESA, ISRO).

Professor Dekker has led major projects for the Wealth from Oceans and Water for a Health Country Flagships as well as many externally funded projects (e.g. by National Land & Water Audit, the Australian Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility, State Agencies, energy resource companies and defence agencies).

Professor Dekker has co-supervised seven Doctoral and four Masters students on remote sensing of water quality and or benthic habitats.

Professional activities

Professor Dekker is a member of the:

• American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO)
• Australian Marine Science Association (AMSA)
• Australian Coastal Society
• Marine Technological Society.

Professor Dekker holds the following positions:

• Chair of International Society Photogrammetry and Remote  Sensing Commission VII; 2008-12: Thematic Processing, Modelling and Analysis of Remotely Sensed Data: WG 3: Information extraction from hyperspectral data
• Co-Chair GEO: WA-08-01-g Working Group on Inland and Coastal Water Remote Sensing
• Member, Editorial Advisory Board, Remote Sensing and Digital Image Processing book series by Kluwer Academic Publishers (Dordrecht/Boston /London)
• Principal Investigator, European Space Agency MERIS Project: Validation, Development, & Application of Ocean Colour Algorithms in Australian Coastal Waters
• Member of Belcolour: Belgian Coastal Remote Sensing Programme
• Co-chair of International Optical Shallow Water Remote Sensing Working Group (Office of Naval Research-USA and Australian Research Council funded).

Find out more about CSIRO Land and Water.