GIS

The use of consistent and comprehensible spatial data is fundamental for ecosystem research, in particular in the context of long-term observation series. Methods in geographic information sciences for spatial information analysis allow to build and link complex models of different scientific fields.

Tasks and main research:

• Analysing spatial and temporal data and modelling natural phenomena and processes.
• Developing methods for the analysis of big geo-data collected casually (rather than according to a well defined design) at different spatial scales.
• Developing and implementing concepts to provide spatially distributed geographic information (Virtual Data Center).
• Maintaining and advancing the National Forest Inventory NFI-database and the Datacenter Nature and Landscape DNL, developing software for the NFI and DNL and implementing the long-term availability of spatial and statistical data and related methods.
• Maintaining and advancing the services, software and database for the WSL Data Portal envidat.ch.
• Maintaining and advancing the Geographic Information System of the WSL.
• Transferring knowledge at the university level, through lectures, support and supervision of Master- and PhD-theses in the main topics of the GIS-Group.